


Wrought Out of Darkness

by Eggplant47



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Oral Sex, Panic Attacks, Recovery, Sick Character, Suicide Attempt, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 22:00:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21204752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggplant47/pseuds/Eggplant47
Summary: Should Harvey really forgive his mother? Starts mid-S6E12. This is a Marvey story with a hard-won happy ending.





	Wrought Out of Darkness

“The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.” —E.M. Forster, A Room With a View 

Harvey had gotten so much better at hiding his panic attacks since Mike witnessed one almost a year ago. It wasn’t one of the worst kind, no vomiting, and Harvey was even able to muster up the breath to lay into Jack Soloff, but Mike saw it and worried and touched his back. And god that touch burned because that's all it was, a fleeting, pitying touch before Mike walked away, always walking away. 

Jessica was right at the time—he was losing it, first because Donna left him, and then because he thought Mike was leaving him too. Since then, Mike had gone to prison and come back, the firm had been through a complete leveling and was still a mess, and through it all the attacks got worse, but he got better at hiding them. Now that Jessica had left too, his world seemed to be imploding. 

He’d survived Mike going to prison, although he thought he would die or kill someone during those two and a half months which seemed like a year. He put all his focus on getting Mike out of there, and that single-minded drive got him through it without losing it at work. As soon as he was alone in his apartment high in the sky, he would curl up and shiver and pant. Sometimes he threw up, and sometimes he drank too much thinking about Mike by himself in that cold, dark place being threatened by a murderer with a grudge. He hardly slept during that time, but he did it; he got Mike out and now he was safe at home with Rachel. Mike couldn’t be a lawyer, which made Harvey want to scream, and he was still engaged to Rachel, which made him want to scream some more, but he was safe, and that was something. Harvey had to smile like an idiot while watching Mike and Rachel’s fantasy reunion at the prison gate as if his heart wasn’t in his throat, but Mike wasn’t dead. He kept telling himself that was all that mattered, but deep down he knew it wasn’t enough. 

Donna was back with him, and that helped for a little while, but Mike was out of his orbit and Jessica was in a whole other state. Harvey tried to make things right for Mike, moved heaven and Earth to bring him closer, even humiliated himself going to Anita Gibbs of all people to get Mike into the Bar for real, but like so much of what he did lately, it backfired and ended up with Mike enraged with him, screaming that even a miracle wouldn’t get him back at the firm and that Harvey should stop messing with his life. The thought of Mike abandoning him for good threatened to crush his chest. He’d told Mike he needed him, but it wasn’t enough to bring him back. 

Harvey forced the thought down, his breath catching in his throat. He wasn't going to have a panic attack on the train to Boston. He wasn't. He listened to Miles Davis on his phone, counting backwards in his head from 100, one of the relaxation techniques Dr. Agard had suggested, and tried to think of something good. The Yankees. Yankee Stadium was his safe place, another relaxation technique courtesy of Dr. Agard. He thought of the Yankees, stats rattling through his brain, but then that got him thinking about Mike and his brain, and how he could rattle off those same stats even though he cared little about baseball. God, that beautiful, beautiful brain. 

He’d done the goddamn therapy. Shouldn’t Dr. Agard have been able to fix this? But she kept wanting him to talk about his mother, bringing all his most deeply buried, darkest memories to the surface, and the panic was still there, always hovering in the periphery, any time he didn’t have some external fire to put out and was forced to notice the fire within. Harvey had to get a grip before Donna, or god forbid Louis, noticed, but he could feel his carefully crafted persona, the one he had built up over the past thirty-plus years, splitting at the seams, and he didn't know what was underneath there, didn't want to think about what was beneath the façade. 

That mask had been there so long—handsome Harvey, smirking Harvey, swaggering Harvey, tough guy Harvey—he didn't know what was inside. Maybe nothing. Or worse, maybe something too raw, too fragile and quivering to survive exposure. What would happen when someone saw a bad one, the kind he’d been getting more and more lately where he vomited and shook so hard he couldn’t stand? He’d been able to hold them in for when he was home alone late at night, but he didn’t know how much longer he could restrain himself like that. 

Donna kept pushing and pushing and pushing. Dr. Agard had too before he ditched her. Go see your mother, they said. Forgive your mother. It always came back to dear ol' mom, didn't it? And they thought they knew the story because that's the story he told, about infidelity and lies. What could be worse than that? That was definitely enough to fuck someone up, to cause abandonment issues, and that’s all they thought his problem was. As he’d said to Dr. Agard in a moment of anger, “You have no idea what bringing up my mother is to me.” She really had no fucking idea. 

Sometimes he forgot the full story himself. Actually, he thought maybe he'd gone for long periods of his life, through college, through law school, forgetting that he was lying to everyone, to himself. Yes, Lily Specter cheated on her husband throughout their marriage. Yes, Harvey kept the secret. But it was only one secret of many, and the least awful. How could he trust Dr. Agard with his darkest secrets, knowing what she said about Sam Tull in that deposition, making him sound guilty after he’d opened up to her in therapy? And for her to suggest Harvey was anything like his mother—he wanted to punch her in her smug face. 

Maybe he should get off the train early and return to New York, but Donna said he needed to make things right with his mother. To forgive. She didn't know what his mother had done though. She didn't know, and how could he possibly tell her without everything coming apart? He'd split open and turn inside out, his bloody innards exposed. Speaking the truth would surely kill him. But she was right, he had to settle it somehow, so he would do as she said and go see his mother. 

The last time he had seen her was his dad’s funeral, and he’d barely kept it together for Marcus. Donna was right, he would have regretted not going for his dad, but seeing his mother and hearing her bullshit eulogy almost broke him. Marcus told him to let things go, so he buried all the anger deep down, played nice, even complimented her goddamn strawberry pie and her lie of a speech, but hearing her say that he would always have a mother that loved him, and then seeing Bobby there, that was too fucking much. He could’ve killed him, but for Marcus and his kids’ sake, Harvey fled. 

Harvey closed his eyes and thought of the law, the beautiful, beautiful law, trying to internally recite, Mike-style, passages from legal precedent. He'd made it 25 years without thinking about the truth too much. He threw himself into baseball and boxing. He threw himself into academics. And he threw himself into sex, sleeping with any attractive girl and occasional boy who was up for it. By his sophomore year in high school, the façade was pretty solid, and had only gotten stronger since. Harvey Specter was that cocky son of a bitch who excelled at everything. He was the most popular guy at school yet had no true friends. 

Back then, the only reason he spent any time at home was to make sure Marcus was safe. He was pretty sure Lily never touched him. Harvey watched his brother like a hawk, helped him with his homework and with sports. Their dad toured a lot back then, and Lily wasn't home much either, so someone had to keep Marcus safe. It would kill Harvey to find out the same things had happened to Marcus, but... no, his mind wouldn't go there. 

All of his energy went into focusing on anything but his mother, and so to all outward appearances, Harvey Specter excelled in every way, first as his high school valedictorian, then at NYU. Even when a shoulder injury dashed his dreams of the major leagues, he had a backup plan that was almost as good. Why was a son of bohemian artists, a jazz musician and a painter, so interested in corporate law? No one ever asked, just assuming, he supposed, that most children rebel against their parents. But the truth was, he wasn’t motivated by rebellion but by power and control, sometimes over others, but mostly over himself. He loved how studying law brought order to his mind, and how he could use the law to control his world. He would move to the city, make lots of money, and never be powerless again. 

When he found himself in debt after college, unable to afford law school, he got a job at one of the top New York City law firms in the mailroom, looking for ways to impress the lawyers he encountered there, his charming mask firmly in place by then. He hit the jackpot with Jessica, and the rest was history. 

Through Harvard Law and his early career working for the DA, the façade only became stronger, more practiced and natural. He thought it became who he was. When and how did it start to crack? Perhaps there were small fissures with Scottie, with Zoe, but those cracks sealed up when the relationships ended. He only revealed enough of himself to his girlfriends to create the illusion of something real, and he never fought for those relationships when obstacles arose. He let them go with no fight at all really. Sealing those cracks made the façade that much more impenetrable. 

It was Mike who created the widest crack. Five minutes after meeting him, Harvey knew he had to have him. He wasn't sure how, but he had to keep him, so he did the most insane thing a lawyer could do and hired an associate with no law degree, not even a college degree, on the spot. It was improbable and insane. The things they’d been through over the past six years—the fights and the betrayals—couldn’t weaken the powerful connection they had, or that Harvey thought they had anyway. 

When Mike left the firm to become an investment banker for a time and became his adversary, Harvey tried to harden his heart into a cold stone, but in private he was losing it. He drank so much one night that he woke up in the morning naked in a pool of vomit on the kitchen floor with no memory of how he got there. Another night he fucked a stranger so hard in the men’s room of a dive bar that the guy, whose head had smacked hard into the tiled wall, threatened to call the police until Harvey gave him three hundred dollars for his troubles. 

And then Mike was back, thank god, and Harvey could breathe easier for a while, even though Rachel was where he wanted to be. He understood the appeal. She was smoking hot, and Mike was like the high school geek who got the most popular cheerleader to go to the prom with him. Harvey didn’t like it, but he got it. He’d even encouraged Mike to get back together with her after the Logan Sanders debacle, why he couldn’t say. He’d said he admired what they had, but maybe he just thought if he couldn’t have Mike, he could at least see him happy. Or maybe he thought their relationship wouldn’t survive. However, it did. 

Yes, Mike had caused the widest crack, and it wouldn’t close. 

And Donna wouldn’t let it close either. Harvey loved her so much. He didn't even know how to classify the relationship. Yes, they'd had sex once, but the same was true of half of New York and a good portion of Cambridge. No, it wasn't romantic love. She wasn't like a sister either, and she definitely wasn't like a mother. Like a guardian angel perhaps? Yes, that was the closest he could come to describing it. She’d known about Mike’s fraud since the beginning, after all, and kept the secret for Harvey. After he told her he loved her, he knew she wanted more from him, but despite Donna’s seeming omniscience, she didn’t understand why Harvey couldn’t give her anything more because she’d never guessed at his darkest secrets. He knew he was at fault and maybe inadvertently led her on, but he just couldn’t seem to have a normal conversation about feelings with anyone, even her. He was glad she had gotten back together with that Mitchell guy. He seemed to be treating her right, and the pressure was off Harvey. 

When she had left him for Louis, the panic attacks ratcheted up, the surge of abandonment palpable and cutting, the crack widening. Surely she could see by then that he needed her, even though he wasn't capable of saying it. And now that she was back with him and the firm was getting back on track, she wanted him to forgive his mother, assuring him that this was the only way he could be whole. She was so sure she was right, and she usually was, so he went on this mission. But she didn't have all the facts, did she? There was no way he could give her all the facts. He could hardly share the facts with himself. 

Harvey thought of his mother’s painting, effectively stolen by that weasel Elliott Stemple. Donna and Jessica thought they knew why he cared about it so much, and they were right to some extent; it reminded him of a time when he didn’t hate his mother, when his family was intact. The greater truth was it reminded him of a time before he understood that what his mother did to him was wrong, when he worshipped her and thought she worshipped him. 

He was seven years old when he watched her work on it in her garage studio. His father took a picture of them one afternoon as Harvey watched his mother paint and Marcus toddled around nearby. When he looked at the painting hanging in his office, he imagined his family together and happy, a fantasy. Now all he had was a photograph of the painting unfinished inside one of his dad’s record jackets, with his mother facing away from the camera, paintbrush in hand and Harvey gazing at her lovingly. Back then, he didn’t know yet that what she did to him was wrong, and he didn’t know yet that she was also sleeping with men who were not his father. 

Harvey was pretty sure lying to your therapist was counterproductive, and that lying about lying was even worse, but that’s exactly what he’d done. He was only in therapy to get the drugs to control the panic attacks that were threatening his livelihood. He kept going, but frankly he thought Dr. Agard was full of shit. He didn't know much about therapy, but from what he'd seen in books and movies and from taking Psych 101 at NYU way back when, therapists weren't supposed to tell their patients what to do and what to think, but it seemed more and more like that's what she was doing. 

He’d thrown out the pills, not just because he thought he’d come to terms with Donna leaving him, but because they made him tired and even more nauseous than he already was. The therapy sessions didn’t work, the pills didn’t work, and after telling her the edited version of his mother’s betrayals, he'd ditched the sessions with Dr. Agard. Maybe he'd sleep with her in the future, since she was kind of hot, and she had flirted with him unprofessionally on more than one occasion, but he definitely wasn’t going back for therapy. 

Was he being fair? He had lied to the woman repeatedly about most things. He'd been dreaming of Mike, always Mike. And he'd told her yet another version of the cheating mom story. It was hard to keep track of the fake parts of the story and how much to omit. There was some truth to it. A kernel. His mom cheated on his dad. A lot. She made Harvey keep the secret. These were truths. But there was so much more to it. 

Harvey jolted awake when the train stopped in Boston. He felt grimy from the five-plus hour ride, but he hadn't wanted to fly. He wanted to be able to get off at one of the stops if he couldn't go through with the trip. Now here he was in South Station. Donna had arranged for a car to bring him to the Ritz, and once there in his luxury suite, he stripped off his clothes and took a steamy shower, not too tired to stroke himself off to thoughts of Mike's sweet red lips. 

He ordered room service that he barely picked at and poured himself a scotch from the mini-bar, and then another. He considered getting dressed again and going down to the hotel bar to get better scotch and to pick up a beautiful stranger, maybe male, so he could get rough, but felt too tired for fucking anything but his own hand. He was too restless to sleep though, so he took some of the files out of his bag, thinking maybe work would help, but the words blurred as the fourth drink hit his brain, and the thought of seeing his mother for the first time in seven years started to make him sweat, so he took off the fluffy hotel robe and lay on the bed in his underwear. He turned his laptop on, pulled up some porn, and tried to focus on the two big-breasted ladies tag teaming the plumber. Sex, superficial sex, had always been one of his main go-tos for stress relief. Sex, running, the batting cages, and the boxing ring. He refused to examine why. 

He must have drifted off because he woke up still on top of the covers, chilled, with dawn's faint light creeping through the shades, the laptop asleep beside him. The mattress was super comfortable, but he was cold, so he closed the laptop and put it on the bedside table. He burrowed under the covers, delaying his plans for the day. Lately, every thought he had led him somewhere he didn't want to go. If he thought of work, he thought of Mike and how he'd never have him. If he thought of sports or movies, he thought of Mike and how he'd never have him. If he thought of music, he thought of his dad and how much he missed him and was angry with him at the same time. He’d told his dad once that he was a great father, and his dad had said, “Maybe the cool father, but not a great one,” and Harvey knew he was right, which made him think about his plans for the day ahead, and he just couldn’t...he just couldn’t think... 

He tried to breathe, lying there in the cozy bed, but his throat was closing. He curled tight under the covers and gasped like a fish out of water, tears leaking from his squeezed-shut eyes. He waited and waited, trying to get air, hoping the rising nausea would subside again so he wouldn't have to get up to vomit. This was getting so, so old. Eventually it did get better, his airway opening up, and he lay there, quietly weeping, exhausted, aching until he fell asleep. 

At 7:00 he got up and went down to the hotel’s gym, running hard for an hour on the treadmill. Afterward, he showered and dressed, regretting that he didn’t have his usual armor, a three-piece suit, with him. That would be absurd though, visiting family in a suit, wouldn’t it? He went downstairs for a breakfast of coffee and toast and headed to the college to find his mother. 

He’d looked up her schedule on the college’s website and found her in one of the art studios. Their reunion was surreal. 

Like him, she had constructed a new persona. Clearly she and Bobby had done well for themselves. Her clothes looked expensive, like they were out of some catalogue for sixty-plus-year-old affluent artsy types. Same for her hair. He had a flash of the boozy hippy chick from his childhood, painting in her rickety garage studio all day. Since then, she’d gotten an MFA, moved to Boston, made some in-roads in the art scene there, and became a professor. Harvey wondered if she had forgotten her life before, what she had done to him long ago, if she, like Harvey, told the story of infidelity, the ordinary sin, leaving out the greater sins. 

She looked so happy to see him, not so happy to put him before her students’ art show, but happy nonetheless. Like he did to cope so often in his life, he acted as if he were playing a role in a movie, saying what he knew he should say if they were normal people with a normal mother-son relationship. 

After agreeing to meet her for dinner the following night, the next stop was his brother’s restaurant. It was a nice place, thanks to Harvey and the dirty loan from Charles Forstman that later bit him on the ass. Despite everything Harvey had tried to shield him from, Marcus hadn’t had it easy. It killed Harvey that Marcus blamed him for their mother leaving. He cringed inwardly when Marcus said that it was great Harvey wanted to make peace with their mom but that “a lot has been said over the years,” and he couldn’t just show up, as if Harvey was the one at fault. Marcus had only been eleven years old when she left, old enough to understand that their mom had cheated on their dad, but that didn’t mean he wanted her to leave them. He’d missed her enough to follow her up to Boston and start a family there. He couldn’t understand why Harvey told their dad, or why she was the one who had to go. He forgave her so easily. Just like everyone else, Marcus didn’t have all the information, and Harvey couldn’t share it. 

When Harvey left for college a year after their mother left, Marcus felt abandoned all over again and somehow never forgave Harvey the way he’d forgiven their mother. They both loved their dad, but that didn’t mean Marcus enjoyed living with him in those years when Gordon Specter had trouble getting out of bed and was finding less and less work as he got older and boozier, and jazz got less popular. And then, as if they were all cursed, Marcus got cancer. Thankfully it was curable Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but Harvey felt guilt upon guilt, first for leaving Marcus and his dad to go to college in the city, and then for Marcus being sick, as if he had caused it by his absence. 

Harvey tried to be the best big brother in the universe, only to fail over and over. Harvey and their dad had taught Marcus to play poker when he was a teenager, and when Marcus turned twenty-one, Harvey had treated him to a thrilling night in Atlantic City. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that Harvey realized Marcus was hooked. He didn’t blame Marcus for his gambling problems and didn’t begrudge him the dirty loan he’d taken to get Marcus back on his feet. He would always fix whatever he could for Marcus, to shield him from the harsh realities of the world that no one had ever protected him from. If that meant Marcus blamed him for everything and forgave their mother, so be it. 

Marcus convinced Harvey to stay at his place, so Harvey reluctantly checked out of the cushy hotel room and parked his bags in Marcus and Katie’s tiny den with a futon. The twin girls, Franny and Haley, barely remembered him, and the older two kids weren’t that interested in him anymore. By the time dinner was over, the twins had warmed up to him, and he ended up reading them bedtime stories. It was pretty calming, actually, to read the same story over and over to these beautiful little girls with their grandfather’s eyes until they drifted off, snuggling with their stuffed animals. Just because he knew he’d never have any of his own, didn’t mean he didn’t like children. In the back of his mind, he wondered if Lily had ever done anything to her grandchildren but clamped down on that thought. There was no way. She was seventy years old now and a different person. 

At the restaurant the next night they played their parts again. He realized that she ate at Marcus’ restaurant all the time, that the two were oh so close, and as they looked at the menu, something wound tight in his chest. Nonetheless, he soldiered on and recited his lines, telling her he was ready to forgive her. She smiled, oh so naturally and then dropped the bomb on him: “I want you to know that I forgive you too.” The grip on his heart tightened. She told him that he wasn’t a child anymore as if he should have let what she did to him go a long time ago, as if none of it had ever happened at all. She was gaslighting him. It did happen. It did. And then she had the nerve to play the victim, to act as if it was all just a long ago and minor infidelity. As if she hadn’t...she hadn’t... 

At least Harvey didn’t back down, and told her she was a selfish, self-centered, disloyal woman, but of course that was only the tip of the iceberg. She was the monster of his nightmares. She turned the whole thing on him—that he was the traitor and the neglector. He stormed off, the grip in his chest crushing. 

Back at the house as he rushed to pack his bag, Marcus continued to take her side, as if Harvey was the unreasonable one, and Bobby came storming in to say that the family worked better without him. They’d all cast him as the villain. It was just too much. Harvey really had no one. 

He stayed the night again, tossing and turning, trying to cry silently, choking on his tears. Why couldn’t he tell Marcus what their mother had done? Even if he could though, would Marcus believe him? Harvey felt profoundly alone, his whole chest cavity hollowed out. 

The next morning, he wanted Marcus to understand before he left, but Marcus only twisted the knife deeper, saying that he’d had a relapse two years ago and didn’t even tell Harvey, that he was protecting his family from Harvey, that Lily and Bobby stepped in as Grandma and Grandpa to save the day. Harvey had always told himself that Lily would never do anything to Marcus’ kids, but he didn’t know how close they had all become, that she spent so much time with them. "Marcus,” he said, urgently, “do you leave them alone with her?” 

Marcus looked at him like he was crazy and said, “Of course. Sometimes. They’ve stayed at her house.” 

Harvey started to pace in the kitchen, getting more and more agitated. Marcus tried to still him, a hand to his chest. He looked Harvey in the eye, confused and hurt. “She’d never do anything bad to those kids, Harvey. She’s an amazing grandma.” 

Harvey realized with certainty at that moment their mom never did anything to Marcus, never did anything to the kids, just him. It was something about him that made their mother treat him like a vessel to be filled with her sickness. And he was the only one who saw it. It was like she had played a magic trick, creating an illusion for everyone else to see, saving the dark truth only for him. She’d written a revisionist history with herself cast as the loving mother and him as the black-hearted, ungrateful son. He felt like he himself was a black hole sucking in all that was rotten in the world. He was nothing. 

The cab arrived at the house, and Harvey grabbed his bag and ran out to the street, ignoring Marcus calling after him. 

Harvey's breath started to speed up as the cab sped up heading towards the airport. His chest burned, and he wondered if maybe this was the time he was following in his dad's footsteps and actually was having a heart attack. He was pretty sure he wanted it to be true. The driver glanced at him nervously in the rearview mirror, and finally Harvey gasped out, "Pull over, pull over!" The driver waited as Harvey emptied his stomach at the curb. A woman walking her dog gave him a wide berth as he gagged up bile. When the heaving stopped, he stayed hands on knees, trying to calm down. He spat and waited. He didn't know how much time passed. Five minutes? Ten minutes? But he eventually could breathe well enough to get back in the cab. 

"You ok, sir?" the driver asked with a thick accent, and Harvey answered, "Must've been something I ate." 

The rest of the trip was a blur, checking in at the airport, getting onto the plane. It was like he was on autopilot, and he was surprised to find himself up in the clouds, sprawled out in his first class seat. Thankfully the woman seated next to him seemed just as inclined not to talk, so he spent the short flight sipping at whisky and nibbling on pretzels to settle his stomach. 

He made it home from the airport and practically collapsed through the door, dropping everything and sinking to his knees in the foyer. Memories flooded over him, shameful dark memories. He couldn't remember the first time his mother touched him in his bed at night. It was before Marcus was born, he knew. It happened often when dad was out touring, and when he was little, Harvey liked it. It felt nice, and his mommy told him how much she loved him. That caused the deepest shame, that he liked it. 

Harvey thought maybe he wanted to die, that if he couldn't stop thinking about this, he shouldn't be alive. He was on his knees, choking on sobs, unable to breathe. The memories wouldn't stop. They were cascading over his eyes. He couldn't see where he was. 

He was thirteen in his bed and he avoided mom as much as he could in those days because he didn't like the touching anymore, hadn’t liked it for a long time, and he knew what she was doing with those men she called cousins or friends. She didn't even try to hide it anymore. And Marcus was only eight, so Harvey took him out with him whenever he could. Harvey was cocky and smart and funny. He was cute and athletic, so he could get away with taking his little brother everywhere. No one made fun of Harvey Specter because anyone who made fun of him got stabbed with his sharp wit, and everyone knew that if that didn't work, Harvey went to boxing camp and could give even a high schooler a bloody nose. They'd seen him do it. When another kid picked on Marcus, Harvey didn’t beat the kid up, but actually went to the kid’s dad like an adult. Everyone at school knew not to mess with Harvey. 

That night when he was thirteen in the dark in bed, mom said it was time for him to be a man. He could smell she'd been drinking, but he was frozen as she pulled away the covers and felt between his legs. He was worried about Marcus but then remembered he was at a sleepover party, his first. Harvey had been roiling with hormones lately, and he didn't want to be, but he was hard. He felt frozen as she pulled his pajamas down and straddled him. It was over quickly, and he kept his eyes closed. She said something, but there was a roaring in his ears, so he didn't hear what it was. His eyes were tightly shut so he didn't know when she left, but when he opened them, how much later he didn't know, he was alone. 

For days, maybe weeks after, he was not very aware of what he was doing. He avoided his mother, which wasn't hard because she was usually out, and he took care of Marcus. Harvey made Marcus’ lunch and walked him to school and back and walked him to soccer practice. He took him to his own after-school activities. He was not letting that kid out of his sight except when they were in school. Harvey did all his homework, befriended his teachers, and acted like the coolest kid in school, but it was like he was in a play reciting lines. 

Weeks passed and he couldn't even say what happened during them, but then dad came home, and Harvey met him at the door, collapsing weeping in his arms. "Hey, Slugger, what's this about?" his dad asked, but Harvey couldn't speak, and his dad let it go. His dad had never known what to do about crying. 

When dad was home, the house was filled with music and it was like there was a party every night. Harvey liked to listen to the adult conversations, and often there were improvised jam sessions, and sometimes Harvey even sat in on the piano. He wasn’t bad, dad's friend Mo said, and Harvey knew he had to be the coolest kid in town. 

During the day when dad was home, his mom played the role of perfect wife and mother, making all their favorite foods, but there was always more drinking the later it got as people started to arrive, and the talking got louder. Sometimes his parents fought because his mom was flirting with one of his dad’s friends, but someone always calmed them down, or his mom drove off to god knows where. 

One late night when he was fourteen, he was lying in bed listening to the party downstairs. Marcus was sound asleep across the room. The door opened and it wasn’t his mom or dad. It was a new guy who played bass, his face lit by the hall light just enough for Harvey to recognize him. He wobbled a little, clearly drunk, and eventually sat on the edge of Harvey's bed. Harvey was frozen and silent, waiting for whatever was going to happen, not wanting to wake Marcus. 

"Kid," the guy whispered, "you are faaantastic," running a hand over his covered leg. "So pretty," he slurred, pulling the covers back. Harvey was screaming inside, but the sound wouldn't come out. He was so used to being silent and still in his bed at night for his mother, that he let it happen. His dad was downstairs, so close, but he didn't call out, didn't make a sound as the man touched him. "Put me in your mouth," the guy said, almost gently, holding his face in one hand as he guided his erect penis into Harvey's mouth. 

It was a blank after that. Harvey didn't remember what happened. He didn't remember much of anything from when he was thirteen then fourteen then fifteen. He knew objectively what he did during that time period. He went to school, played sports, protected Marcus, hung out during the house parties, sometimes jammed with the band. But all the details were hazy. 

There were a couple of groupies who hung out at the house and one night during the summer when he was fifteen, he smiled at one, she smiled back, and he led her out to the back yard and fucked her against the side of the porch. She was probably in her twenties and only spoke to him when she said, "Aren't you a special boy," before taking a condom out of her back pocket, opening it and rolling it onto him. After that, he was always prepared. 

He considered this to be when he lost his virginity and told the story of the groupie whenever asked about his first time, but of course that wasn’t his first time. After that groupie, he had a lot of sex throughout high school. He got older girls to buy condoms for him, and he gained a reputation at school as a skilled lover, but not someone who would ever be your boyfriend. He broke a lot of hearts. 

His sophomore year he made the varsity baseball team, and the senior shortstop was the first guy he fucked. He didn't think about why he was doing it, why he was doing anything really, but he felt powerful, fucking his way through the school as he got straight As and college baseball scouts were looking at him. He even fucked his pretty English teacher his junior year. 

And then there was Bobby. His mom had never had anything like a boyfriend when his dad was out of town. Just guys she slept with. Or him. But Bobby was becoming a fixture. When Harvey was sixteen, he came home to the sound of them fucking in his parents’ room and flew into a rage. He barged in on them and threatened to tell, but his mom begged him not to, pleading in a way he'd never seen before, like she was a normal person with normal feelings. He hated her, but he loved her. God, he was so fucked up, but he relented, not for her, but for his dad, who would have been crushed, and for Marcus, who was smart enough by then to know that mom fucked around, but would have been devastated by her leaving. 

She seemed to just be fucking Bobby the mechanic around that time, and Harvey didn't know what to think about that. The guy seemed like a nothing, so inferior to his dad, who was like the coolest guy in the world, and inferior to Harvey too. His mother hadn't visited Harvey’s bed for almost a year, and if he thought about that his brain felt like it was going to short circuit and his chest got tight. He couldn't even identify the feeling and didn't try to. All he knew was he hated fucking Bobby. 

Harvey told Dr. Agard that he was an adult when he told his dad about Bobby, but the truth was he was seventeen. Why did he lie? Did he tell Scottie a different version? And Mike a different one? And Jessica a different one? And Donna a different one still? He couldn't remember. He lied so much about it all he couldn't keep track anymore. But Harvey was seventeen when his dad forced him to fight in the ring. When he pommeled his dad and then said he told his mother to stop and that he was sorry, his dad asked, “You told her to stop what? What was your mother doing?” It was on the tip of his tongue to tell everything, let it all spill out, but all that came out was “Bobby.” That night everything exploded. His mom was out of the house for good and less than a year later, he was off to NYU, leaving thirteen-year-old Marcus alone with their despondent father. 

Harvey couldn't get off the floor in his foyer. It was happening, the crack in the armor was too great and he was splitting open, his insides spilling out. He eventually crawled to his drink cart, the buzz in his ears so loud he couldn't hear his own heaving sobs, but he could feel his body shaking. He grabbed the first bottle he could reach, fumbled off the top and poured it down his throat, chugging painfully past the tears and tightness. When the bottle was empty, he smashed it on the floor. 

The rest of the night was a blur. He didn’t eat, he might have slept, but mostly he drank and wept. He broke more bottles. No matter how much he drank, all of the images from his childhood that he’d worked so hard to block out, were cascading through his brain. They just wouldn’t stop. Time stretched out and snapped back. He didn’t know how much time passed or where he was anymore. 

He swayed on his knees. The sparkling glass, glittering in the morning sunlight, filled his vision. He crawled through the shards and saw that his hands were bleeding, but he didn't feel it. Without hesitation, he pushed back his left sleeve, gripped a large, jagged piece in his bloody right hand, and dragged it hard and deep up the inside of his left forearm from the start of his wrist beneath his watch to the crook of his elbow. 

What are you doing? a tiny voice in his head asked. Vibrant red spurted from the deep wound, dripping to the floor. I think I'm killing myself, he answered in his mind, and with that thought he felt more peace than he could ever remember feeling in his whole life. His throat and chest loosened, and the tension he'd been carrying so long drained out of him with the blood. He lay down in the glass and watched the blood pulse and flow until he sank blissfully into the soft, quiet darkness. 

Mike had spent most of the morning working with Marissa on the Sophia Price case, when Donna called him. He almost didn’t answer because he didn’t have the time, but it was Donna, and why would she be calling in the middle of a Tuesday morning? Since Rachel stopped talking about the wedding and the two of them spent more time apart than together, Mike hadn’t seen Donna much anymore either. 

“Mike,” she said without even saying hello, “I’m worried about Harvey.” 

“Why, what’s going on?” he asked, while writing down some notes for Marissa. 

“Louis needs some information about Teddy Doyle, and I’ve been trying to reach Harvey since last night. He was supposed to be back in NY Sunday, but he’s not answering his phone or email or anything. It’s so unlike him,” she said in a rush of words. He hadn’t heard a worried Donna in a while. 

“Coming back from where?” he asked, dropping his pen to the desk. 

“He went to Boston to see his mother,” she said. That was surprising. He didn’t think Harvey spoke to his mother. 

“Have you called his mother?” Mike asked. 

“I don’t have her number,” she said, “but I called Marcus, and he said Harvey left his place early morning Sunday. He also said Harvey was pretty upset, but he was cagey about why.” 

Mike wondered why Donna was calling him about this. “Why don’t you check his apartment?” he asked. 

She paused before answering, “I don’t have the key anymore.” 

That was surprising. “What? Why not?” he asked. 

Donna let out a breath and then said, “When I started working for Louis, I gave it back, and he hasn’t returned it since then. But you still have his key, don’t you?” 

“Yeah,” he said. Harvey gave him a key when he stayed there during his brief breakup with Rachel after she admitted to kissing Logan Sanders. “But I’m pretty busy right now, Donna.” 

“Mike, I’m getting a really bad feeling about this,” she said, and the increased worry in her voice made him stand up and already start putting his jacket on. “I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important, but Harvey’s just been so on edge lately. I walked in on him screaming at Louis the day before he left. Ever since Jessica left, he just seems, I don’t know, sad, and I don’t know what I’m worried about, but I’ve never known him to be away from the firm for this long without at least checking in. We’re still not completely out of crisis mode over here and...” 

Mike was already halfway to the door when he interrupted her. “Ok, ok, Donna, I’ve got to head uptown anyway, so I’ll go check if he’s home on the way.” 

Mike left the clinic, mumbling a vague reason to Oliver, and headed to Harvey’s place on his bike. He called Harvey’s cell on the way but only got a message that the voicemail was full. He greeted Tom at the front desk, and after the doorman checked in the computer to see if Mike was still on Harvey’s list of people to let up without calling, Mike asked if he could park his bike in the lobby. While Tom rolled the bike behind the desk, Mike asked if Harvey had been in lately. 

“The last I saw Mr. Specter was yesterday,” he said, “and I gotta say, I try not to pry, but he didn’t look so good.” 

“What do you mean?” Mike asked, his concern growing. 

“He was breathing hard and sweaty and just looked pretty upset. Y’know, and he usually looks so GQ. He didn’t even answer me when I said hi,” Tom explained. 

Mike suddenly felt a sense of dread and it seemed like an eternity waiting for the elevator. When he reached Harvey’s floor, he practically ran to his door and knocked hard. No one answered. Despite all the times Mike had been in Harvey's apartment, it felt wrong to let himself in without Harvey’s express permission. Upon opening the door, his brain couldn't immediately compute what he saw. First the luggage that prevented him from opening the door all the way, then a jacket and keys on the floor. An alarm bell sounded in his head, and then the smell hit him—scotch and something strangely metallic. 

He turned and walked down the narrow entryway and everything slowed down, his brain taking snapshots of each element of the image before him. Broken glass everywhere. A man's body lying on the floor. Blood. Lots and lots of blood. 

"Harvey?!" he heard his voice shout. "Harvey!" He skidded to his knees beside the body, ignoring all of the glass and alcohol and blood. 

It was Harvey on the floor and, god, he was covered with blood. A long, gaping wound on his left arm seemed to be the primary source. Bright red blood pulsed out in spurts, brighter than any red he'd ever seen. A passage from a high school biology textbook flashed in Mike's head about the vibrant color of arterial blood. Harvey’s usually tanned face was so white, his lips a pale blue. Without thinking, Mike was in motion, tearing off his own jacket and wrapping it tightly around Harvey's mess of an arm. He fumbled with his phone with blood-slick hands, pressing 911, turning it on speaker and placing it on the floor. He pressed his trembling fingers against Harvey's neck. 

"911 . What is your emergency," a disembodied female voice said. There was a pulse, Mike thought. "911. What is your emergency?" the voice repeated. Mike blurted out Harvey's address and the voice said, "That's good sir. Do you need an ambulance at that address? What is your emergency?" 

Mike had trouble starting, but then said, "I don't know. Blood. There's lots of blood." 

"Ok," the voice said. "Is it your blood or someone else's?" 

"We need an ambulance!" he shouted back, and the impossibly calm voice responded, "It's already on its way sir. Can you tell me what's going on?" Mike stuttered through a description of what he found in the apartment, of what he was doing, and it seemed like an eternity of pressing the jacket down on Harvey’s arm before the EMTs were there and someone was pulling him away from Harvey's still, still form. 

It was like a bad dream, watching the EMTs working on Harvey. There was some shouting and a lot of tubing and equipment and an oxygen mask and soon they were headed for the door with Harvey on a rolling gurney. Harvey looked like a wax statue from a house of horrors. At some point the EMTs had cut away his shirt and covered him with blankets. The visible parts of his skin not coated with blood were as white as the thick bandage now wrapped around his forearm. 

Harvey was not dead, Mike thought. There wouldn’t be an oxygen mask if he was dead. The thought made him take a breath and realize that he’d somehow moved and was sitting in one of Harvey’s dining room chairs. On the chair beside him sat a uniformed police officer staring at him intently. “Sir, I’m officer McFee. Can I ask you some questions now?” she quietly asked. 

He looked down at the blood on his hands, shirt sleeves, and tie and nodded. 

“What is your name?” she asked. 

“Ross,” he said, “Mike Ross.” His mind went absurdly to “Bond. James Bond,” and he almost started laughing, but clamped down on it because he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop. 

“And what is your relationship to Mr. Specter?” she asked while writing his name in her book. 

Mike felt his heart turn over in his chest. What was his relationship to Harvey? His devotee? His frenemy? He settled on, “I used to work at his law firm. He was my boss. But now we’re friends.” 

She nodded sympathetically and then asked, “And why are you here?” 

Mike explained how Harvey’s assistant couldn’t reach him, how they needed something for a case, how Donna was freaking out because it was so unlike Harvey to disappear for more than a day without telling her, how Mike had a key. 

She seemed to accept that explanation, writing it down, and asked, “Do you have any idea why Mr. Specter would do this to himself, or why someone might do it to him?” 

Mike hadn’t even let himself think yet of what had happened to Harvey. He had just been in emergency mode: Stop the bleeding. Call 911. But now he considered the possibilities. Could Harvey have really slit his wrist, his whole arm, like that? Why? He knew Harvey had problems, that he was emotionally constipated. He’d long ago figured out that Harvey’s whole arrogant dick persona was masking something kind of sad. He’d seen Harvey have a panic attack after all. But this? Harvey had told him everything was ok. He was the toughest person Mike knew. 

Or could it have been foul play? Harvey had his share of enemies, but his building had very good security. Mike knew because the doorman made sure he was on Harvey’s list every time he came there, even though he’d known him for years now. There might have been plenty of people out there who hated Harvey, like William Sutter or Charles Forstman or Frank Gallo, but Mike couldn’t imagine how they would have orchestrated this. It occurred to Mike that the police might consider him a suspect, although the officer said nothing to suggest this. 

Harvey had tried to kill himself, Mike concluded, and he would have succeeded if Mike hadn’t at that moment stopped by to check on him. Mike sniffed. “Harvey has a lot of enemies, but someone who could do this? I don’t think so.” His thoughts turned to Donna. “Can I call someone?” 

“Who do you want to call?” the officer asked, writing more in her book. 

“His secretary,” he said, but then thought of Rachel. “And my fiancée. She’s his associate.” He thought of Jessica too and whether he should call her in Chicago. What could she do about any of this? Nothing, but Mike figured she would want to know. He’d leave dealing with Jessica and Louis to Donna and Rachel. 

“Ok,” she agreed, but she made no move to get his phone. Where was his phone? “Does Mr. Specter have any family we can contact?” she asked. 

Mike thought of everything Harvey had ever told him about his family, which wasn’t a lot and wasn’t good. He remembered something Scottie once told him about Harvey’s little brother getting sick. He thought of what Harvey had told him about his parents the night they got stoned together, and how pissed Harvey had been at him when Mike showed up to work with a black eye and split lip and implied that he’d slept with a married woman. 

“Um, his brother, I guess. His father’s dead. I don’t think he talks to his mother,” is all he could tell her. He asked, “Do you have my phone? His assistant knows more about his family than I do.” Mike had always thought Donna was probably more of Harvey’s family than his biological family was, that maybe that was true of Jessica too. Mike had started to think of himself as part of Harvey’s family, and Harvey had said as much, but maybe not. Maybe he didn’t know Harvey, this man who had become more of the center of his universe than his own fiancée, at all. 

“Let me examine you first,” she said, and he didn’t know what she meant, but a young man with a camera came over and took pictures of him, including closeups of his blood-smeared hands which the officer turned at different angles. She was wearing latex gloves. It occurred to him that maybe he needed a lawyer, but he didn’t care about that now. Once Harvey woke up, he could tell them what happened. If he woke up. Mike stayed silent. 

Mike wasn’t sure how much time passed, but two more police officers arrived, and they were examining the entryway and the area with all the blood and broken glass, leaving him alone. Officer McFee told him he could wash his hands, so he did at the kitchen sink, watching Harvey’s blood run down Harvey’s spotless drain. “Can I take this off?” he asked her, gesturing at his bloody shirt and tie. She said yes, so he removed the clothes and handed them to her. He had some blood on his pants too, but they were navy blue, so it didn’t show as starkly. 

She didn’t tell him to leave, so he stayed, sitting back down at the table in his undershirt and stained pants. He could smell his own sour adrenaline sweat. One of the officers disappeared into Harvey’s bedroom, and Mike wanted to protest. They were violating Harvey’s privacy. But he stayed silent. 

Officer McFee set a plate with a bagel and cream cheese and a bottle of orange juice on the table beside him and said, “Eat something,” before leaving him be again. His stomach growled audibly at the sight of it. He ate and sipped at the juice, but it tasted all wrong. 

He thought he should call Rachel, but he didn’t ask for the phone again. His relationship with Harvey had been a sore point between them even before he went to prison, and she didn’t seem the right person to talk to right then. He thought maybe he should go to the hospital where they took Harvey to find out how he was doing, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. He thought, wildly, that he wished Harvey was there to tell him what to do. He thought of when his parents died and how he couldn’t do anything but cry for days, how he had to sleep in Grammy’s bed. He thought of when Grammy died and he cried on Rachel’s shoulder and snapped at everyone, later getting high with Harvey. Harvey wasn’t dead, but this felt just as bad as those other losses somehow. Someone brought over a blanket and draped it over his shoulders, and it wasn’t until then that he realized he was shivering. 

Officer McFee finished writing in her book and got up to retrieve Mike’s phone, which someone had placed in a Ziplock baggie. It was liberally smeared with Harvey’s blood. "Maybe you’ll want to use mine for now,” she said, handing him a phone. Mike gave her a nod of thanks and then called Donna. 

As soon as he heard her voice, before he could say anything, he burst into tears. 

Donna being Donna, she knew it was him. “My God, Mike,” she said, alarmed. “What happened? What’s the matter?” 

“I...I...” he stuttered. “It’s Harvey...” 

“Mike, breathe! What about Harvey?” she practically shouted in a panicked tone Mike had never heard from her before. 

“He’s alive, he’s alive, sorry,” Mike gasped out, realizing that she was thinking the worst based on his tears. “There was a lot of blood though,” he sobbed and then whispered, “I think he slit his wrist.” Saying it aloud started fresh tears and he handed the phone back to the officer, who turned and walked away so he couldn’t hear what she was saying to Donna. 

More time passed, and the police officer eventually told him that she and her partner would escort him to the hospital, where Rachel was waiting for him. Riding in the back of the police cruiser, still wrapped in the blanket, he felt as if he’d been arrested again, but they just brought him straight to the emergency room bay and sure enough, there stood Rachel on the curb waiting for him. She enveloped him in a tight hug and whispered, “It’s ok, it’s ok,” against his neck. Inside, looking out of place in her glamorous designer work clothes, sat Donna, wide-eyed and shell-shocked. 

“Mike,” said Donna, standing up as soon as she saw him, glancing down at the blanket around his shoulders. “What did they tell you?” 

“What?” he said, confused by her question. Rachel was still holding his hand, but Donna embraced him suddenly, which made him burst into tears all over again. Eventually the three of them sat huddled together in the waiting room. Neither asked him about why he was in just an undershirt and a blanket or about his stained pants. 

Donna finally composed herself and said, “Mike, the police said it was a suicide attempt. They had to keep you in Harvey’s apartment for that long to rule out foul play.” 

It took him a few moments to process what she’d said. What did she mean by “that long”? How long? He realized many hours must have passed since he’d found Harvey late that morning. He noticed for the first time that it was getting dark outside. “Did you see a doctor yet? Has anyone said anything? God, there was so much blood,” he babbled, trying not to cry any more. 

Donna and Rachel each held one of his hands and Donna said gently, “They said we had to wait, and a doctor would come see us when Harvey’s stabilized.” 

“So he’s going to be ok?” Mike asked. 

“We don’t know,” Donna answered, her face crumpling. “Oh my god, this is my fault,” she sobbed. 

Mike and Rachel both turned to her and Rachel said, “What? Donna, what are you talking about?” while rubbing her back. 

“I don’t know, but I pressured him to go see his mother and forgive her,” she explained. “He hadn’t seen her in seven years since his dad’s funeral where they’d fought. He didn’t want to go, but I pressured him. He was so broken up about Jessica leaving and I told him he had to reconcile with his real family. That’s the last we spoke and now this!” 

Rachel shook her head. “Donna, maybe his mother has something to do with this, but you can’t blame yourself. How would you possibly know what would happen? And he’s a grown man. He didn’t have to go just because you told him to. In our wildest nightmares, none of us could have foreseen this.” 

Mike nodded in agreement and Donna settled down. Mike wondered what could possibly have happened with Harvey’s mother. After they sat in shared silence for a while, Donna said, “Mike, did you know that Harvey has you listed as his primary emergency contact and his health care proxy?” 

“What? Why?” Mike said, shocked. 

“I don’t know,” she answered, “but he obviously has a lot of trust in you. Jessica and I are listed as emergency contacts too, but you’re listed as number one, and Marcus and his mother aren’t listed at all. He also included a health care proxy document in his personnel file even though it’s not required.” Mike wondered if Donna was hurt by Harvey’s choice, but if she was, she didn’t show it. Mike couldn’t imagine what it meant that Harvey made him his health care proxy, rather than his own mother or brother, rather than Donna or Jessica. That meant as long as Harvey was incapacitated in the hospital, Mike would make all his medical decisions for him. He was flabbergasted. 

Rachel still held his hand but looked away as if the news bothered her. It seemed that anything involving him and Harvey bothered her. 

“Shit! Maybe we should call Marcus,” Donna said. 

“I wonder if Harvey would want us to,” Mike thought aloud, “if Marcus isn’t listed as even an emergency contact.” 

“Well, I’m definitely not calling his mother,” Donna mumbled to herself. 

“I don’t think you should call either of them,” Mike said with growing conviction. “I mean, he’s not dead. If he wanted them to know his business, they would be on the forms, right?” Mike found himself feeling angry at Harvey’s family even though he’d never met them. Surely they were to blame. He knew, at least partially, what his mother had done, but the fact that his brother wasn’t listed as a contact also made him assume his brother had done something unforgiveable too. Mike thought of what Harvey had said to him about growing up in a house full of people but still feeling alone. Mike’s chest ached as he thought of himself in his grief-stricken adolescence and how nice it would have been for his and Harvey’s childhood selves to have met and been there for each other. 

“Rachel says you knew he was having panic attacks?” Donna asked, drawing him out of his thoughts. 

“Well, I mean, he wouldn’t have told me if I hadn’t walked into his office last spring and he was having one. I thought he was having a heart attack.” Mike felt as if he was betraying Harvey by talking about it, that he had betrayed him back then by telling Rachel about it. At the time, his priority had been being open and honest with Rachel, but now he felt guilty about that. Mike had been in awe at how Harvey, who a second before could barely breathe, was all of a sudden putting Jack Soloff in his place like a boss, only to deflate as soon as Jack left his office. Seeing Harvey swing from panic to badassery and back again had deeply shaken Mike. By the look on her face as he left Harvey’s office, Mike was pretty sure that Gretchen knew something was up too. He wondered how Donna knew about the panic attacks, if Harvey had confided in her. “You knew?” he asked her. 

She told him about how Louis had recorded Harvey confiding in him in order to smooth things over when Louis was trying to get Harvey suspended for hitting him. Mike shook his head, thinking of Louis and all his insecurities and Harvey-envy. 

Mike looked back and forth to Donna and Rachel. “What are you going to tell people? The other partners. Harvey’s clients. Does Louis know?” He felt a little panicky thinking of all the people who relied on Harvey and how he wouldn’t want them to know about what happened. 

Donna said, “I had to tell Louis. He’s holding a meeting with the other partners as we speak, redistributing some of Harvey’s workload. For now we’re telling them Harvey was in a bad accident, keeping it vague. I have to hand it to Louis; he’s pretty broken up about the news, but he’s holding everything together right now.” 

“Jeez, I wish I could help,” Mike huffed out, wondering how they’d get any work done the next day or the next in the midst of this crisis. He felt guilty now for not accepting Harvey’s offer to come back to the firm. If he still worked there, he could have helped. Maybe things would be different and Harvey wouldn’t have done this if he had accepted his offer. Mike cringed at the narcissism of his own thoughts. What did he have to do with any of this? He thought about how he’d have to go back to the clinic and come up with a way to explain his own sudden absence, how he’d have to trust Oliver and the rest to deal with their cases. Nathan wouldn’t fire him. He was getting Mike’s legal services at a steal. 

“I have to get to the office to help Louis and Katrina,” Rachel announced abruptly. She turned to Mike as if asking for permission, and he gave it without hesitation. He released her hand and said, “Go. I’ll stay here with Donna to wait for the doctor.” She stood, unsuccessfully tried to straighten out the creases in her skirt, gave Mike a kiss, and left him and Donna to wait. 

Donna got up a few minutes later to talk to the front desk and came back with green hospital scrubs which she handed to Mike. “Mike, get cleaned up and change in the bathroom,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “and throw out your clothes.” 

By the time he emerged from the bathroom, Donna was talking to what looked like a doctor, a middle-aged, dark-skinned man in hospital scrubs. When Donna saw him, she said, “This is Mike Ross, Harvey’s primary emergency contact and health care proxy,” which made Mike shudder before he looked expectantly toward the doctor. “The doctor didn’t want to tell me anything about Harvey without you here,” she explained further. HIPAA regulations swam through Mike’s brain. It was a murky area, who doctors are legally allowed to talk to about what following a suicide attempt. 

“How is he?” Mike asked. 

“I’m Dr. Jeffrey Singh,” the doctor said. “I’m the ER physician who attended to Mr. Specter. May I ask what your relationship is to Mr. Specter?” 

“I’m his friend,” Mike said with more confidence now than when he’s said it to the cop. “A good friend.” He wondered if the doctor thought that meant he and Harvey were a couple and was surprised to realize that he didn’t care if he did. 

Dr. Singh nodded and said, “Mr. Ross, you saved Mr. Specter’s life. If you hadn’t found him when you did and created a tourniquet to slow the bleeding, he would be dead.” 

Mike huffed out a breath and Donna squeezed her arm around his shoulders. Sometimes Mike thought everything about him and Harvey was fated. What were the chances Harvey would have been interviewing associate candidates in the same hotel on the same day that he was running from the cops in a drug deal gone wrong? What were the chances that Mike would enter Harvey’s apartment so soon after he slit his wrist? What else was fated to happen between them? 

“He cut deeply into the radial artery and lost a great deal of blood, so we gave him a massive blood transfusion in the ER,” the doctor continued. “Thanks to you,” he nodded at Mike, “he never went into cardiac arrest, so he should fully recover. The other wounds to his hands are superficial” 

Mike and Donna simultaneously let out a breath. 

“We called in one of our vascular surgeons, Dr. Emmett Coleman. Mr. Specter is lucky that this was the closest hospital, because Dr. Coleman is a leader in his specialty. He performed emergency surgery to repair the artery. Although the cut was deep, it was straight and therefore reparable, but there is always a possibility in this type of injury of lasting nerve damage or damage to the tendon. Dr. Coleman will reassess the arm in a few days.” Mike swallowed at the thought of Harvey losing any use of his arm, but he was so relieved that he was alive and not in a coma or something that it hardly mattered. 

“What happens now?” asked Donna. “Harvey has means, so we want the best possible care for him.” Mike had just started to get used to being someone with “means” before he went to prison, and he cringed a little at Donna’s words. The implication that someone, like his grandmother, without money wouldn’t get the best care saddened him. It was the reason he’d agreed to deliver the weed for Trevor in the first place, and the reason he’d accepted Harvey’s outrageous job offer to become a fraud. It was why he wanted to be a lawyer since he was eleven and why he preferred pro bono cases. It was why his work at the clinic now was so important even if he could never be a real lawyer. 

The doctor gave a slight nod. “Of course. As I said, he’s out of surgery now and has been moved to a private recovery room and will be there until he’s awake and stable. He’s being administered antibiotics to guard against infection and he has to be monitored for other vascular complications. This might take a couple of days, although he should wake up before that. A hospital employee will be present with him at all times to make sure he doesn’t harm himself.” 

Mike felt tears well in his eyes at the thought of Harvey—self-assured, proud Harvey—having to be guarded like a mental patient. 

Dr. Singh continued, “We will continue to monitor his physical health, but a social worker and a psychiatrist are also assigned to his case as well, which is standard with all suicide attempts. As soon as he wakes up, the police and the social worker will ask him some questions to determine what happened, and then the psychiatrist will assess him and determine the course of treatment. All of us—me, his primary care physician, the social worker, and the psychiatrist are in communication with one another coordinating his care. New York Presbyterian is one of the top hospitals in the country, for both vascular surgery and psychiatry, so he’s in very good hands. Do you have any questions so far?” The doctor waited, but Mike was so overwhelmed with all of the information that he was rendered speechless. 

“When can we see him?” Donna asked. 

“The social worker will be down soon to talk to you about Mr. Specter’s history very soon. She can discuss visitation with you, but as it’s already ten o’clock at night, it’s best to come back tomorrow, and the surgeon won’t be able to speak with you in person until tomorrow. The psychiatrist will also want to interview you, either with the social worker or separately, but that won’t happen until tomorrow at the earliest. The hospital will contact you, Mr. Ross.” 

Mike felt pulled in two directions—he wanted to run down the hall and burst through the OR doors to see Harvey, but he also wanted to bolt out of the hospital and run straight home. He was afraid of who he would find in the hospital bed when the time came to see Harvey, because he knew it wouldn’t be the Harvey he thought he knew—the Batman to his Robin. 

They thanked Dr. Singh and Donna gently pulled Mike by the arm towards the front desk. The woman at the desk handed Mike a clipboard with papers to fill out and the two of them sat back down to complete them. Mike and Donna tried to fill out the forms together, but even between the two of them, there were a lot of gaps in their knowledge of Harvey. Was he taking any medications? Besides his father having a heart attack, what was his family’s medical history? They didn’t know. 

Eventually someone called Mike’s name and he and Donna got up to greet the woman. She was young, maybe thirty, with wavy dark hair and dark, earnest eyes. "My name is Raina Kobold, and I'm a social worker and crisis counselor. And who are you?" she asked Donna in a kind yet direct manner. 

“I’m Donna Paulson. I’m one of Harvey’s emergency contacts and one of his oldest friends,” she answered, her Donna confidence only betrayed by a slight quiver in her voice. It didn’t escape Mike that she didn’t mention her work relationship to Harvey. 

“Ms. Paulson, I’ll speak to you next, but I’d like to speak to Mr. Ross alone first,” she said in that same gentle tone. 

“Ok, I understand,” Donna said before squeezing Mike’s hand, giving him a look of reassurance, and returning to her waiting room chair. 

The social worker led him to a quiet area in the hallway where there were two chairs and waited until he sat down. “Mr. Ross, I understand you were the one who found Mr. Specter?” 

“Yeah,” he said, a picture of what he’d seen in the apartment flashing in his mind. 

“How are you holding up?” she asked softly. 

Mike let out an ironic chuckle. “Umm, I don’t know. This is just really, really awful.” 

“I bet. I’m here to help Mr. Specter, but I recommend you speak to a counselor yourself about this as soon as you can. Having a loved one attempt suicide is always traumatic, but being the one to find him after such a violent attempt could be particularly traumatizing.” 

A lump in Mike’s throat kept him from responding, but he nodded his head, tears forming in his eyes. The image of a pale and still Harvey lying on broken glass with bright red blood spurting out of his arm would never be erased from his mind. As if Mike hadn’t had enough trauma in his life already. He’d been made to see a grief counselor for a while after his parents were killed. He’d cried a lot and screamed a lot in that counselor’s office. It was the darkest time of his life, and he’d fucked up a lot in his youth and young adulthood, but he’d made it through. Maybe he’d talk to someone eventually, but right now, Harvey was the priority. 

“Can you tell me a little more about your relationship to Mr. Specter?” the social worker asked. 

Mike paused this time to think of how to answer. “He’s my friend and my former boss,” he started, pausing again, thinking of Donna’s response and how the work connection seemed irrelevant now. “That doesn’t really capture it though. He’s my mentor and has made a huge difference in my life over the six years I’ve known him.” He’s the reason I’m not in prison right now, he almost said. “I don’t know why he made me his health care proxy and has me listed as his primary emergency contact though. I didn’t know that.” 

Raina typed some notes into her tablet and then looked up with a small smile. “So you’re not romantically involved then?” she asked frankly. 

“No,” Mike answered simply, realizing he was neither surprised nor offended by the question. 

She didn’t ask him to elaborate. “Well, we’ll have to ask him about it when he wakes up then. It sounds as if this attempt was surprising to you. Is that true?” 

“Yes, very,” Mike agreed. 

“Did you know that Mr. Specter was depressed or in crisis?” 

“No!” Mike exclaimed, but then thought about it more, considering what he should tell the social worker. His instinct was to not say anything Harvey wouldn’t want him to, but then he thought of Harvey in a pool of blood and realized he should tell her anything he could think of. “Well, I knew he had some problems. Back in April when I was still working with him, I walked into his office and he couldn’t seem to breathe. I thought he was having a heart attack and started to call 911, but he stopped me and said it was a panic attack. He was shaking so much he couldn’t even pour himself a glass of water. It completely freaked me out because Harvey’s like the most in control dude I’ve ever known. I mean, he gets pissed off and yells sometimes, can even get a little violent if provoked, but he always solves problems and usually keeps his cool doing it. But I guess that wasn’t his first panic attack because he knew what it was.” 

“You say he’s been violent?” she asked, and Mike resisted rolling his eyes. Of course she latched onto that detail. He didn’t want her to think Harvey was dangerous or something; he was just the kind of guy who would throw a punch to protect someone or defend someone’s honor. He was a man’s man. He almost smiled thinking about how when Tess’ husband beat him up, Harvey threatened to kick the guy’s ass before he realized why he’d done it. And he had kicked Stephen ‘s ass when he found out Donna had been dating a murderer. 

“Well, I didn’t mean he’s a violent person in general, but for instance, there’s this lawyer from a rival firm who’s like his arch nemesis, and Harvey’s punched him a couple of times when the guy said some offensive shit about his mother.” Mike thought of what an asshole Tanner was. “The guy definitely deserved it both times.” 

Next Mike thought of the assault on Louis that Harvey had almost gotten suspended for. At the time, Mike couldn’t believe what he’d heard about Harvey throwing Louis through a glass coffee table, even though sometimes he’d wanted to punch Louis himself. “He once got into a physical altercation with one of our colleagues after Harvey slept with his sister,” Mike told Raina. “I don’t really know the details about that one, but Harvey almost got suspended for it. Harvey boxes, so I don’t know, I guess he goes there when seriously provoked or is defending someone he cares about, but I wouldn’t call him a violent person.” 

“What do you know about his family?” she asked, and Mike was glad she’d changed the subject. “It’s unusual for family members not to be listed as emergency contacts.” 

Mike knew so little about Harvey’s family, even though Harvey knew everything about Mike’s. “Harvey doesn’t talk about his private life like hardly at all, but I know he was close to his dad who died before I knew Harvey. His dad was a jazz musician and Harvey sometimes plays his records in his office.” Mike got the sense that Harvey’s dad was probably his role model for coolness. 

“I think he hates his mom though,” Mike continued. “After my grandmother died and I was in a really dark place, he told me that when he was sixteen, he walked in on his mom sleeping with some guy who wasn’t his father and she made him keep the secret from his dad. He said he grew up in a house full of people, but he always felt alone. And he never talks about his brother. I didn’t know he had one until his girlfriend at the time who knew him in law school told me that his brother got sick while they were at Harvard, and Harvey used his tuition to pay for his treatment because he didn’t want to ask his mother for money. I know he also helped his brother financially because he had a gambling problem.” As everything spilled out of his mouth, Mike realized maybe he knew more than he’d thought about Harvey’s family, and he’d never realized before how sad it all sounded. 

Mike felt ashamed now for joking back when his grandmother died about Harvey’s stoned being depressing, when maybe they could have had a real conversation that could have helped both of them. Their relationship had been based on witty banter and movie quotes for so long, but occasionally, like when Harvey fought so hard to get him out of prison, he caught glimpses of how deeply Harvey cared. Harvey seldom talked about how he felt, but he’d shown him in a million little and big ways. Mike made a promise to himself that when Harvey woke up, he wouldn’t let their conversations stay on the surface as they usually had in the past. 

“Is he dating anyone now?” she asked next. 

“Not that I know of,” he answered. He realized that it had been a long time since he was aware of Harvey dating anyone. He knew there was no shortage of beautiful women who wanted Harvey, but he didn’t seem to have had a girlfriend since Scottie. He thought of Harvey telling him years ago that he wasn’t the one to come to for relationship advice. 

Raina was busy typing away. “Based on what you’ve told me so far, I’m guessing you don’t know, but are you aware of any medications he’s currently taking or if he’s in any kind of counseling? I only see in his medical records that he saw a therapist, a Dr. Agard, for a short time earlier this year and took Zenfil for anxiety for an even shorter time.” 

Mike knew from Rachel that Harvey had seen that therapist they had to depose, and the therapy sessions made his unexplained morning absences around that time make sense, but he was still a little shocked that Harvey took medication. Harvey had to be pretty desperate to go to a therapist and take psychiatric medication. He knew how much Harvey hated to ask for help or admit weakness. “No, I don’t know,” he answered, “but Donna might.” 

“Are you aware of his drinking habits?” she continued. 

Mike thought about all the times he’d seen Harvey with a tumbler of scotch in his hand like it was a lawyer accessory, how he’d bought him a glass of every scotch in the bar their first night out after Mike got out of prison. Harvey had seemed so desperate that Mike accept his job offer. If he’d known what a dark place Harvey was in, he at least would have talked to him more about it rather than flat out rejecting it. “Harvey likes his expensive scotch and I’ve seen him drink a beer or two,” he said, “but I’ve never seen him drunk.” 

“I’m asking because his blood alcohol level was very high when they tested it in the ER.” 

The strong alcohol smell of Harvey’s apartment flashed in Mike’s senses as if he were still there. Scotch and blood. “Maybe that’s why he did it,” Mike posited. “He was drunk. He didn’t know what he was doing.” 

Raina smiled at him sadly. “It can be comforting to think that, and alcohol does lower inhibitions, but we treat an attempt of this severity, regardless of intoxication, as a serious suicide attempt. A wrist incision that deep is not easy for someone to do to themselves, sober or drunk.” 

Mike slumped in his seat again. He still thought it had to be a factor, that Harvey wouldn’t have done this while sober, but the social worker seemed to be implying that someone who cut their wrist that deeply had to really be trying to die. 

“Any other drug use you’re aware of?” she asked. 

Mike hesitated and then said, “We once smoked weed together, but I don’t think he usually does that or anything else as far as I know. But, y’know, I feel like I don’t know a lot right now.” 

She nodded and moved on to her next question. “Are you aware of any financial troubles or other unusual stressors in Mr. Specter’s life currently?” 

“Well, being a name partner at one of the top corporate law firms in the city is constantly stressful, but Harvey has always been into that. He’s told me more than once that ‘Life is like this’.” Mike held his hand at chest level like Harvey had done and then raised it to a much higher level. “’And I like this.’ He’s a risk-taker. And he’s super rich. I mean, the firm has been through a lot of struggles lately,” because of me, he thought to himself, “but I can’t imagine Harvey having personal money troubles.” 

Raina looked at him thoughtfully. “I know it seems like someone as wealthy and accomplished as Mr. Specter would never do this, but the truth is that high performers are under great pressure to continue to excel, and sometimes there’s no end of that pressure in sight. Think of the rich and famous people who are in the news sometimes after committing suicide. If his firm was struggling, as you say, that could definitely be a factor.” 

Mike shook his head. “I don’t know. It just seems like there has to be more to it, that something big happened personally, because his professional life has been though a lot of ups and downs for years, and he’s always taken everything in stride. Donna says that he just went to see his mom who he hasn’t seen in seven years. He didn’t want to go but went because Donna said he needed to forgive her, and Donna is usually right about everything. I just can’t believe this is happening.” 

Raina let him ramble, did some more typing, and then raised her eyes. “Is there anything else you would like me to know about Mr. Specter?” 

Mike took a moment to think and then said, “Harvey is like...one of the most important people in my life.” He’d almost said the most important person, but then he thought of Rachel and caught himself. “He’s incredibly smart and witty. There’ve been a lot of ups and downs in our friendship, but he’s always been the strong one, the one who made things right. I just can’t believe he did this,” Mike concluded, tearing up. “It makes me wonder if I really know him at all.” 

She gave him one last look and then stood, gesturing towards the waiting room. “Ok, well thank you. I’ll walk you out and talk to Ms. Paulson next. After that I suggest you both go home and get some sleep. We’ll see how Mr. Specter is tomorrow and then talk about visitation. As you know, being his health care proxy means the doctors will be asking you to make decisions about his care if he’s unable to.” She looked at him as if asking if he was ready to take on that role. He just nodded and followed her out to the waiting room. 

He waited while Donna spoke to Raina and didn’t realize he’d dozed off in the chair until he was startled awake by Donna touching his arm. Her face was so un-Donna-like, he didn’t recognize her for a moment. Her lipstick and eye makeup were long gone by then, and with her red-rimmed eyes, she looked about ten years older than usual. “C’mon,” she said, “Let’s go home.” 

They shared a cab and hardly spoke, giving each other a long hug before Mike got out at his and Rachel’s place. It was around midnight by the time he walked into the silent apartment. He stripped off the scrubs and took a quick steaming shower before getting into clean underwear and brushing his teeth. Rachel’s sleeping form under the covers didn’t move or make a sound as he got into bed beside her. He was bone tired but stared into the darkness for a while. He thought of waking Rachel up to make love, or even just to hold her, but she was sleeping like a rock. He felt a glimmer of resentment that she hadn’t waited up for him, but then quashed it. Rachel must have been exhausted too. Shouldn’t he feel like he could wake her up to hold him? He just couldn’t, because he really wanted to hold Harvey. He cried a bit then, slinging his arm over his eyes, and eventually fell into a restless sleep. 

The first time Harvey became aware, he thought he was dead. Everything was white. But then he felt a stinging ache in his left arm, and next he noticed an antiseptic smell. He cracked his eyes wider. He felt like a sandbag, his body a formless weight. After a moment he realized he could move his head. On one side he saw his bandaged left arm elevated on a pillow. On the other side he saw an IV needle taped to the crook of his elbow. Both of his hands were wrapped lightly in gauze. An unfamiliar man sat by the door watching him. As his awareness grew, so did his panic and the need to flee. He bolted up with a surge of adrenaline and tried to pull away from the IV, but hands were quickly on him, holding him down—two, then four. Someone was speaking, but it seemed far away and muffled. He felt something cool travel from the IV needle into his arm, and then he slid back into darkness. 

The next time he woke up, he felt a little more aware. He knew he was in a hospital. He realized his right wrist was now tethered to the hospital bed and he breathed in and out to quell the rising anxiety. Stay calm, stay calm, he repeated like a mantra in his head. He focused on the throbbing in his left arm and breathed in sync with it. A different man from before sat in the chair by the door, and a young dark-haired woman now stood beside the bed. Harvey acted as if he didn’t see them, just listening to his own breathing. 

The woman watched him for a while and then typed a bit on a tablet.”Mr. Specter?” she finally said, "My name is Raina Kobold, and I'm a social worker and crisis counselor. You can call me Raina. May I ask you some questions?" She spoke in a tone clearly meant to soothe. 

Harvey was still processing who she was and why she was there but shrugged a bit at her question. Crisis counselor. Was he in a crisis? He guessed he was. 

"Can you tell me why you cut your arm?" she asked gently. 

Harvey closed his eyes again and shook his head slowly. Did he do that, cut his arm so badly he was hooked up to an IV in the hospital? It was hazy now, but he guessed he had. He just wanted his thoughts to stop. He wished he hadn’t woken up. 

"Because you don't want to tell me or because you don't know?" she pressed. 

He didn't trust himself to speak, so he just turned his face away and pretended she wasn’t there. 

She waited awhile as if assessing him and then said in that same even tone they must have taught her in counseling school, "Ok, Mr. Specter, since you don't seem in the mood yet to talk to me about this, let me explain what will happen in the next few days. The attending physician, Dr. Riesling, will monitor you until you’re medically stable and don't need the IV or other acute medical care. You'll be assessed by a psychiatrist, Dr. Mendez, and he'll determine the type of psychiatric care you need. Do you understand everything I'm telling you?" 

Harvey felt more alert at the words “psychiatric care”. “No one can fucking keep me here," he growled, his voice raspy from disuse. He tried to sit up but didn’t have much strength. 

The guard who sat by the door stood up and came toward the bed, so Harvey forced himself to take a breath and sink against the pillow. There was nothing he could do right now with one arm out of commission and the other tied to the bed. He felt too sluggish to panic though. Maybe he was on painkillers, or maybe he was just tired. Raina raised his bed so he was almost sitting up and held a cup with a straw to his face. He wanted to ignore her, but his throat was parched, so he drank the cold water. 

"I need to see Donna Paulson," Harvey blurted when he’d finished drinking, sure that she would know how to get him out of this, but then he thought of what that would mean. She would ask him the same question—why did you do this? And how could he answer? "Or Mike Ross." Mike would ask the same question, but Harvey didn't think he'd press him for an answer. No, Mike would come up with an idea to get Harvey out of this. Isn't that what they were good at, coming up with improbable solutions and conning everyone else? Yes, Mike was the only person he could talk to right now, the only one he could trust. He’d made him his health care proxy after all, not trusting Marcus to make important decisions in a medical emergency. 

“Ok,” she agreed. “I spoke to both Mr. Ross and Ms. Paulson last night. I can contact them and tell them you would like to see them. Ok?” 

"Just Mike," he insisted and closed his eyes. 

"Ok," she agreed. “Get some more rest and I’ll be back later with Dr. Mendez.” 

Harvey drifted off after that and when he woke up, he decided not to speak to anyone until Mike arrived. He ignored the surgeon who came in to check his arm, not answering any of his questions and not looking at the wound. He ignored the nurses who took his vitals, changed out his IV, wiped him down, and changed his hospital gown. They wouldn’t let him get up to go to the bathroom and instead made him piss in a bottle, which was humiliating, but then this whole situation was humiliating. If there was some way to rip open his stitches and let himself bleed out, he would. They released his right hand so he could eat the food they placed in front of him, and he ignored the eyes on him as he ate. The food tasted like paste, and he stopped after a few bites. He ignored another doctor and the psychiatrist. Harvey was taking the advice he’d given to so many clients—don't talk to anyone until your lawyer arrives, even though Mike wasn’t a real lawyer. 

There were no windows in the room, so he had no idea how much time had passed, whether it was night or day, but he must have drifted off again, because when he opened his eyes, there was Mike in casual clothes, watching him. The look on his face was so unnerved, so broken, that Harvey almost asked what was wrong, and then he remembered why he was there, and realized that he had put that look on Mike’s face. 

“Harvey,” Mike said tentatively. He moved his hand as if to touch Harvey, but then dropped it just as quickly. 

“Mike,” Harvey acknowledged, thinking of how to approach this. The social worker was back, standing behind Mike with her tablet and her curious eyes. The guard from when he first woke up was back and sitting by the door, his face blank. Harvey lowered his voice to a whisper. “Mike, you’ve got to get me the hell out of here.” 

Mike looked stricken, his eyes wet. “Harvey, no. You need to stay here.” 

“I’ll stay until the IV is out, but then I’m getting out of here and you are going to make it happen,” Harvey insisted, still whispering, although Raina had stepped closer and could surely hear him. 

Mike took what looked like a calming breath and then said, “Harvey. You almost bled to death. You have to stay here for a while.” 

“My arm doesn’t even hurt that much anymore,” Harvey said. It was true. It ached, but the intense throbbing/stinging had abated. “I’m going home when the IV is out.” 

“Harvey, even after the doctor says you can get up and walk around, you have to stay here for a psychiatric evaluation,” Mike said. “And then what happens next depends on you, so please just tell them why you did this so they can help you.” 

“Jesus, Mike, this is a big fucking misunderstanding,” Harvey pleaded. “I was fucking drunk and did something stupid.” 

“Harvey!” Mike said incredulously. “Something stupid? I found you in your apartment lying unconscious in broken glass with blood shooting out of your arm. They say you would be dead if I hadn’t shown up in time by coincidence.” 

Harvey felt a wave of rage crash over him and shouted, “What do you want, Mike, a fucking medal? What the hell were you doing in my apartment anyway? Get me the fuck out of here or get the hell out!” 

Mike stepped back as if struck. The guard rose from his seat as Harvey’s voice rose. Harvey slumped back against the pillow and closed his eyes, seething. 

Raina, who Harvey had almost forgotten was there, said, “Mr. Specter, would you like Mike to leave or can we have a calm conversation?” 

Harvey didn’t answer, keeping his eyes closed, but Mike eventually said, “I’ll go.” He paused and then continued, “Harvey, I just want to say that we all care about you—me, Donna, Jessica, Rachel. Louis is beside himself. You don’t need to worry about any of your clients. Between Louis, Katrina, and Rachel, they’ve got everything covered until you can come back. Donna says your office is filling up with get well flowers and cards. She doesn’t know what to do with it all. I know you’re mad right now, but I hope you talk to Raina and Dr. Mendez about what’s bothering you so they can help, because we all really, really want you back. I really want you back.” His voice broke on the last few words. 

It was quite a speech, but Harvey kept silent, his eyes closed, and eventually heard retreating footsteps and the door closing. If he thought about any of this, he felt as if he would literally explode, his innards splattering against the stark white walls, so he stopped thinking. He just let himself shut down and drift away. 

It ended up being three days after Mike and Donna left Harvey at the hospital for Mike to visit. He’d talked to the surgeon on the phone the morning after the suicide attempt and was relieved to hear that the surgery went perfectly, and Harvey should eventually regain full use of his arm. Then he spoke to Raina and the psychiatrist, a Dr. Mendez, on the phone, and both of them said that Harvey had been awake briefly but had to be sedated because he tried to rip his stitches out. Did Harvey really want to die that badly? Mike’s chest ached thinking about Harvey being in such despair. Donna had called to say she had visited, but Harvey was just sleeping, so Mike figured it would be better to wait. The fact that Donna was crying and said Harvey looked awful also might have played a role in Mike’s reluctance. 

Even though Nathan told Mike he could take the day off after he told him he was having a family emergency, he couldn’t bear the thought of just hanging around at home doing nothing. He wanted to get back to saving Sophia Price’s home, as if focusing on someone else’s crisis would make his own more bearable. Rachel didn’t seem surprised that he wanted to go to work and acted pretty much business as usual, going into Specter Litt early so she could do damage control with Louis, Katrina, Donna, and Gretchen. They hadn’t spoken about the suicide attempt or Harvey at all. He’d spoken more to Donna on the phone than he had to his own fiancée in person. 

He didn’t even tell Rachel he’d be visiting that day when he went to the hospital. The evening visiting hours were from six to eight, so he made it there by six and fidgeted outside Harvey’s room while waiting for Raina to meet him. She and Dr. Mendez had tried to prepare him for the visit, telling him that Harvey hadn’t been communicative, that he might not talk at all to Mike, or he might be angry. They said that they’d been keeping him lightly restrained since he’d tried to pull the stitches out. Raina said she would be there but wouldn’t interfere with the visit unless necessary. Mike felt as if he’d entered some kind of alternate universe where he would be visiting Bizarro instead of Superman. 

Harvey’s eyes were closed when he and Raina entered the room, but Mike almost burst into tears at the way he looked. It was Harvey, but his ordinarily flawless hair was greasy and matted. His skin wasn’t as white as the last time Mike had seen him, but it was very pale except for the darkness around his eyes. His lips looked dry, and he seemed thinner, his cheekbones more pronounced, his cheeks covered with days of stubble. Most of his body was concealed under a blanket, but his thickly bandaged left arm was elevated on a pillow and both hands were wrapped in gauze. His right wrist was tethered to the side of the bed, and Mike had the strongest urge to reach out and hold the hand, but of course he didn’t know if Harvey would want that, and even if he did, he wouldn’t want to disturb the gauze or hurt him. 

He turned his gaze from Harvey and took in the room. It was like a plain white box, so depressing and empty, and a bored-looking hospital employee sat by the door watching them all blankly. Mike looked to Raina for instruction, but she was busy typing something into her tablet, and when he turned back to Harvey, he was met with liquid brown eyes. 

He’d tried to prepare himself for that first conversation, for all manner of directions it could go, but he couldn’t have prepared himself for Harvey’s anger and denial. Did he really think Mike would just spring him from the hospital after what he’d done? Harvey had called it a “misunderstanding” as if they all couldn’t see the severity of the injury he’d inflicted on himself. Mike tried to stay calm, to reassure Harvey that everyone cared about him and that he didn’t have to worry about his clients, but Harvey only treated him like the enemy. 

Afterwards, out in the hallway, he stood shaking and teary as Raina explained that Dr. Mendez had diagnosed Harvey as having major depression but couldn’t make a more specific diagnosis until Harvey was more stable and communicative. Apparently, he hadn’t said a word to any of his doctors. Mike just couldn’t believe this was happening, that the Harvey he just saw was so transformed from the Harvey he had seen just a couple of weeks ago. What the hell had happened? If Harvey had just visited his mother, then she must have had something to do with it. Mike had an appointment to talk with the psychiatrist the following day, and he’d see if the doctor would try to contact Harvey’s mother, and maybe his brother, to find some clues. 

He returned to the clinic and helped Oliver prepare for court until around eight o’clock before figuring he should go home to see Rachel. They hadn’t spoken to each other all day, not even texting, and for some reason, Mike didn’t feel like telling her about his hospital visit. Since he’d gotten out of prison, the look on her face every time he mentioned Harvey or asked her about working with him was somewhere between bored and annoyed, as if Harvey was the last thing she wanted to talk about. While he was in prison, it seemed like she was more Jessica’s associate than Harvey’s, but since Jessica left, it still didn’t seem like she’d fully returned to working with Harvey. It would feel weird talking about Harvey to her now that he was going through a mental health crisis. 

Before Mike went to prison, his feelings for Rachel had been so intense and unwavering. All of their arguments revolved around the difficulties of keeping his secret while trying to plan a wedding, but the arguments were always resolved with the shared promise that they would be together no matter what, that their love was unbreakable. But now that all the drama of his life as a fake lawyer was behind them, and they just had the day-to-day routine of going to separate workplaces, it seemed that the passion was waning, and their connection was tenuous. 

Despite all of her support during his job search, when he got hired and then fired by Father Walker, and then when he got the legal clinic job, now that he was committed to the clinic and showed no signs of looking for something better, he was less certain about her support. He couldn’t help but feel that she was talking down to him sometimes, as if she felt her future career prospects were more worthy of discussion and accolades than his own less glamorous work. When he’d first told her his salary, she said she would live in a shoebox if it meant being with him, but of course she would never have to live in a shoebox because her salary was already well over $100,000 a year. She also had no qualms about asking him for his insights on her cases, even when he was in prison, but she hadn’t yet asked about his own cases at the clinic. 

They still had sex, but it didn’t feel the same. They were both less playful and less intense, and they barely had time to talk even if they wanted to since they didn’t work together anymore. He could feel them growing apart, and the wedding plans had stalled. 

She was sitting on the living room couch with a glass of wine in one hand and a file in the other, wearing that big, baggy sweater he always thought was so cute, when he stepped into the apartment, but looked up to say, “Hey,” when he entered. 

“Hey,” he answered and moved into the bedroom to change without another word. 

He soon emerged and started to make himself a sandwich when she said, “There’s some pasta in the fridge.” 

“Oh, thanks, but I already started making this,” he said, and then to be polite, “How was your day?” 

She started talking about Louis trying to poach her father’s clients and how her father was still bugging her to come to his firm since Jessica had left. Louis had offered her a third-year associate position, but she said that was moot if she couldn’t get into the Bar. 

He couldn’t even follow what she was saying after awhile because he couldn’t believe she was acting as if this huge thing with Harvey wasn’t going on in their lives. When she paused, he said, “I visited Harvey today.” 

He was met with silence at first and then, “How is he?” 

He stared at her, incredulous at her casual tone, as if he’d just been visiting an old acquaintance at a bar or something. “How is he?” he asked, trying to rein in his anger. “What do you think, Rachel. He’s apparently had a complete mental breakdown. Do you care?” 

She didn’t seem surprised at his question. “Of course I care, Mike,” she said, placing her wine glass down carefully on the coffee table, “but there’s not a lot I can do about it, can I? We’ve been scrambling around like crazy at the firm trying to get all of his clients covered and I’ve got all this stuff going on with the ethics and fitness committee, so that’s taking pretty much all of my energy.” 

Mike tried to understand where she was coming from, realizing that it must be pretty crazy and stressful at Specter Litt. “I get that,” he said, still unable to see her attitude as reasonable, “but we’ve hardly talked since he did it, and I mean, I’m pretty fucking upset about it, but you’re acting like it’s just an inconvenience that’s making your life more difficult. Would you have even asked me about Harvey if I hadn’t mentioned him?” 

Rachel stood. “Mike, of course I would have,” she insisted, “but between you and Donna and Louis, Harvey is all I hear about, and I’m just a little sick of it. Even before this happened, it was like he took up this huge place in your life that you wouldn’t share with me.” 

Mike thought back to some of the arguments they’d had before he’d gone to prison, Rachel complaining that he shared more with Harvey than he did with her. He’d thought that was all resolved, but clearly not. How dare she bring it up now, though, when Harvey needed him most. “Are you honestly jealous of someone who just tried to kill himself and is probably going to the psych ward? Do you know how insane you sound?” 

“Insane?” she countered, now shouting, “Insane is focusing more on your insane former boss than on your fiancée!” 

“What!?” he yelled, recoiling from her calling Harvey insane. “This is a crisis, Rachel, of course I’m focusing on him!” 

Rachel took a breath and stepped back, folding her arms and lowering her voice. “That’s not what I’m talking about, Mike. I’m talking about before he did this. Even though you don’t even work for him anymore, you’re always asking me about him or you’re reminiscing about something brilliant or hilarious he said. Sometimes I think you’re more in love with him than me.” 

“What are you talking about, Rachel?” he asked, but he was replaying all those times she was referring to in his head. 

“I received a letter from the Bar today saying they’re not granting me an interview. Why do you think that is?” she asked, hands on her hips, a challenge in her eyes. 

Mike felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Because of me,” he said, a wave of guilt coursing through him. Grammy had always said Trevor was like an anchor dragging him down, and that’s what he had become for Rachel. “I’m so sorry,” he said, but then thought back to what she had just said before. “But what does that have to do with Harvey?” 

“Everything, Mike. You know that if you hadn’t gone to prison for him instead of staying out of prison for me, I would have no trouble getting into the Bar right now,” she said. 

“Rachel,” Mike said, “we’ve been over this before. I was the fraud. I wasn’t going to let Harvey, who only bent over backwards over and over again to give me the life I wanted, go to prison. He didn’t deserve that.” 

"And I deserve this, Mike? You being a felon is only going to follow us now for the rest of our lives. He may have given you the life you wanted, but you don’t have it now, do you? You’re going to be stuck at that clinic forever. You’re never going to be a lawyer. Since you got out of prison, it’s like you’re drifting away from me. I’m building my career, and it’s like you’re stuck at this dead end.” 

“Oh, it’s all coming out now.” Mike shook his head and chuckled bitterly. “What was all that shit you said about it not mattering that I lost the teaching job and that you’d support me no matter what I decided to do?” 

“I just don’t see you striving for anything more, Mike,” she said. “You were so angry at Harvey for trying to get you into the Bar and back at Specter Litt, but now you’re going to visit him in the hospital every day and make all his medical decisions? What are you, married?” 

Mike couldn’t believe she was twisting everything like that. “Rachel, you really think I’m just going to let him rot in some psych ward? He made me his health care proxy. I have to take care of him right now.” 

“And what about me, Mike?” she countered. “Why aren’t you taking care of me?” 

If she was going for low blows, he’d go there too. “I don’t know, Rachel, maybe it’s because he actually visited me while I was in prison. Maybe it’s because he asked me if I was ok after I got out of prison. Do you even care how prison affected me?” He hadn’t even admitted to himself before that he resented Rachel for focusing more on Leonard Baily while he was in prison than on him. At the time, he had convinced himself that he didn’t want Rachel anywhere near that prison, but in the back of his mind he knew he had always wished that she at least had wanted to come see him. 

“You were only in a white collar prison for a couple of months, Mike. Give me a break,” she said with a coldness he didn’t know she possessed. 

“And the whole time I was being threatened by a fucking murderer, Rachel!” he yelled. “Did you conveniently forget that because you were so busy working on Leonard Baily’s case instead of mine?” 

The argument had gotten out of hand, but it was like once they opened up the pandora’s box, neither of them could close it. 

She let out a bark of cynical laughter. “I know, and Harvey came to your rescue, I know. It’s always been Harvey, Mike. You chose him over me when you went to prison. He made you his fucking health care proxy for god sakes!” she yelled. “He’s in love with you, Mike, and maybe you’re in love with him.” 

He didn’t know if he was going to burst into tears or strangle her, but he had to get out of there. “Rachel, I don’t know what you think you know about me and Harvey, but you don’t know shit. I think I’d better spend the night somewhere else tonight.” 

“Where, Harvey’s place?” she sneered. 

“What?” he said, shocked at the suggestion. “No! You really think I’d go back there after finding him there like that?” A vision of all that blood shooting out of Harvey’s arm, his pale face, flashed in his mind. He physically shook his head to get it out. 

“I don’t know, Mike, but it always seemed to be your go-to place for comfort,” Rachel said. 

He turned away from her. “Fuck, Rachel, I’m getting out of here before I say something I’ll really regret.” 

He stormed into the bedroom, grabbed a few suits out of the closet, stuffed everything else he needed into a suitcase and fled the apartment without even looking at her. Outside, he hailed a cab, but instead of giving the name of a hotel, Donna’s address popped out of his mouth. 

It was almost eleven o’clock by the time he got to her door, but she let him in without a word and gave him a warm hug. “What’s going on Mike? Is it Harvey?” she asked, but then looked at his bags and said, “Rachel.” 

He left his bags by the door and followed her to sit on the living room couch. He’d never been in Donna’s apartment before, but it was exactly as he would have imagined—tasteful but luxurious furniture, eclectic art on the walls, and warm lighting. “Rachel and I had a big fight. I didn’t know where else to go,” he admitted. 

“Let me guess. It was about Harvey,” she said. 

He nodded, unsurprised by her intuition. 

“I know Rachel’s perspective, and I know mine, but give me yours,” she prompted. 

Mike was startled by that, but then of course Rachel had talked to Donna about him, about their relationship. “What do you mean? Perspective on what? What did she say to you?” 

“Mike, Rachel is one of my best friends, and I’m not going to tell you what she’s said in confidence. But you’re my friend too, and you can talk to me too,” she explained, a hand rubbing his back. 

“She thinks I love Harvey more than her,” he admitted. 

Donna held his gaze with knowing eyes, and he knew from the look that that is exactly what Rachel had told her. 

“Well do you?” she asked quietly, taking his hand in hers. 

A denial was on the tip of his tongue, but he only gripped her hand tighter and lowered his eyes. “Donna, I’m not gay.” 

“Not even a little? For Harvey?” she asked with a faint smile. 

He laughed weakly and said, “Ok, I’m a two on the Kinsey scale, alright? But I’ve never really thought that much about it.” 

“What does a two on the Kinsey scale mean?” she asked. 

“Heterosexual, more than incidental homosexual tendencies,” he recited as if reading the description off of the online test he’d taken for fun years ago. Mike had never been repulsed by the idea of gay sex, but he’d always had enough interest in and attention from women to not have to consider men as potential partners. 

“Well, there you go—a little bit gay.” Her smile widened. “Sounds like Harveysexuality to me.” 

Mike dropped her hand and stood, running a hand through his hair. “Donna, this isn’t funny. I’m not gay and neither is Harvey.” 

“Are you so sure about that?” she asked, her smile fading. 

He looked up at her. “Do you know something I don’t?” 

“Yes. Harvey’s bi,” she said with certainty. 

Mike couldn’t wrap his head around that. “What? He told you that?” 

Donna got that mysterious look on her face, the one she always had when displaying her near-magical powers. “No, he didn’t have to.” 

“Because you’re Donna,” Mike concluded with a smile. 

“And I see the way he looks at you,” Donna explained. “I used to think it was the way he was looking at me, until I saw the way he looked at you.” Her eyes filled with sudden tears, but she pulled them back in just as quickly. “Plus, I saw him kiss a guy once in a bar late at night when he didn’t realize I was there.” 

Mike’s eyes widened at that, but he didn’t comment or ask for more details. He knew from Rachel that Harvey and Donna had hooked up once in the past, and he’d joked with Harvey at times about being into Donna, but it never occurred to him that he might be the one keeping the two of them apart. He already felt guilty for being the cause of Harvey’s breakup with Scottie, but maybe guilt isn’t what he should be feeling. It was Harvey, after all, who had chosen him over Scottie. He thought back to all of the times Harvey had chosen his welfare over common sense. Even the times Harvey pushed him away and said they were done, it was always a short-lived exile before Harvey pulled him back into his life 

He sat back down beside her and held his head in his hands. “I don’t need an identity crisis right now,” he moaned, rubbing at his eyes. 

“No time like the present,” she quipped. 

“Donna...” he started, but she cut him off and pulled his hands away from his face. 

“Mike, I love Rachel,” she said, bending to look him in the eye, “I love you, and I really love Harvey. But I know what I know, and Harvey needs us right now. He especially needs you. Harvey’s going to come out of this. He is.” 

Mike looked at her skeptically. He thought of the new version of Harvey he’d seen in the hospital bed. 

“Believe me,” she continued. “I was devastated when you called me in tears and told me what he’d done. It’s made me question everything I ever thought I knew about Harvey, and I know now he was much better at concealing his emotions than I thought.” 

“You got that damn right,” Mike agreed. He still had moments throughout the day when he couldn’t believe Harvey wasn’t busy being a badass at Specter Litt and was instead in the hospital recovering from a suicide attempt. 

“But he’s going to come out of this,” she insisted, and the resolve on her face made him believe it too. “We’re going to get him the best help available, and he’s going to come out of this. And when he does, you two can start being honest with each other.” 

Mike didn’t know what to say, and they just sat in silence for awhile, holding hands. He realized he had to start being brutally honest with himself. Maybe he had no reason to be angry with Rachel, that she was only speaking the truth. 

“It’s late,” Donna finally said, standing up. “I have a guest room and you can stay as long as it takes for you to figure this out. I’ll talk to Rachel tomorrow. It’s going to be ok.” 

Mike wasn’t sure about that, but he got ready for bed and made himself comfortable in Donna’s guest room. Lying awake in bed, he thought of how it was inevitable that he was going to break up with Rachel. In the past when they’d had their ups and downs, he was always sure that he loved her and would do anything to protect her. But then he thought back through all of those fights, and they were always about the same things—him jeopardizing her future career or her relationship with her family, him not putting her first, or her not putting him first. The Logan Sanders kiss and the fact that she almost chose Stanford over him still bothered him. He also thought of how, instead of going home and spending time with her while waiting for his verdict, he had taken on a new case he stumbled upon in the courthouse. She was right; that was a dick move. It saddened him to realize his fantasy relationship with Rachel was over, but he wasn’t devastated by it the way he would have been if they had stayed broken up after Rachel confessed to kissing Logan. It felt now more like the death of a fantasy, rather than the death of a reality. He drifted off thinking of Harvey. 

Harvey didn’t know how many days had passed in the hospital when a nurse told him that he was well enough to get up and walk, and if he did well, he could even take a shower. They had taken his IV out earlier. The sooner he was up and walking, the sooner he could get out of there, so despite his sluggishness, he sat all the way up. 

"Let me help you into this sling and we can go for a little walk,” the nurse said oh-so-gently, holding a dark blue cloth contraption up for him to see. Everyone spoke to him oh-so-gently here, as if a harsh word would shatter him. Maybe it would. He let her maneuver his arm into the sling so his hand was elevated up to his right collarbone. The wound still hurt, but it was a dull throb. 

He wondered when they would take the bandage off and he’d have to look at it. He’d looked away each time they’d changed the bandage, each time the doctor poked and prodded the healing incision. The nurse helped him drape a robe over his hospital gown and slip his right arm into the sleeve, leaving the left side of the robe draped over his shoulder. It took him a minute to realize it was his soft, navy robe from home. Donna. He knew she had been there, but he’d ignored her as soon as he saw her teary eyes. 

The nurse slipped some crappy hospital slippers on his feet before letting him lean on her to stand. He had a momentary head rush, but the nurse waited until she could see he was steady, and together they left the room. The burly guard at the door rose from his seat and followed them silently. Harvey shrugged the nurse’s supporting hand off. The more steps he took, the more stable he felt. As soon as he felt strong enough to run, he was bolting for the door. Not yet though. 

The nurse—her nametag said Alona, but he didn’t care enough to use it—eventually steered him back towards his room and asked him if he was ready to shower. Despite the sponge baths they’d been giving him, Harvey hadn’t felt this filthy after a ten-mile run or going ten rounds in the ring, so he nodded. She helped him get undressed and wrapped his left forearm in plastic. He didn’t even care that she made him sit naked on a chair in the tub and washed his hair for him. He didn’t even care that the guard was standing right in the bathroom doorway. He wasn’t modest. At least she let him have the washcloth to wash the rest of his body with his good arm. The cuts on his hands were barely visible anymore. He wondered vaguely how long he’d been there. 

The walk and the shower wore him out, and he wanted to lie down, but first the nurse brought out some clothes—his boxers, a henley, and sweatpants from home. Donna. He almost started to cry as the nurse took the plastic covering off his bandaged arm and helped him put it all on. It felt good to be clean and dressed, and he would have made a run for it right then if it weren’t for the exhaustion, so he lay down atop the covers and dozed off again, his arm back in the sling. 

When he woke up, the psychiatrist—Dr. Mendez was it?—and Raina were back. He didn’t know if he was starting to get used to being stared at or if he was just too tired to care, but there they were, staring at him again. “Harvey,” the doctor said, “we’d like to start you on a medication called imipramine as soon as we discontinue the pain medication. It’s for depression and anxiety. How do you feel about that?” 

How did he fucking feel about that? How did they think he felt? Harvey wanted to scream, but he didn’t have the energy. He just looked away and thought of that time when he and Mike had played horse in his office with balled up paper and the waste basket. He hadn’t thought about that in so long. Why was he thinking about it now? When was the last time he had fun? 

“Harvey,” the doctor said, and when he’d said it a few more times, Harvey turned to face him. When had they decided to call him Harvey instead of Mr. Specter? Were they all friends now? Something for depression and anxiety, huh. That sounded ok. Why not. 

“Once we stop the pain medication, we’ll be transporting you by ambulance to a small inpatient psychiatric hospital called Safe Harbor which is just a few blocks from your home.” The fact that the doctor apparently knew where he lived, and the weak smile on the doctor’s face made Harvey a bit nauseous. Safe Harbor? Jesus, what had his life come to? “Do you have any questions?” the doctor asked. 

Harvey didn’t know why they kept talking to him and asking him questions when he hadn’t once spoken to any of them since the few words he said after he first woke up, which must have been days ago. He felt as if maybe he’d forgotten how to speak. He certainly had no desire to do so. He just turned on his side as best he could with his arm in the sling, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep. 

He felt like he had a little more energy when he woke up, and there was Mike again, sitting in a chair looking at his phone. No Raina or doctor around, but one of the goons was still there in the chair by the door. “Oh, hi, you’re awake,” Mike said when Harvey stirred. “Are you feeling any better now that you can shower and get dressed?” 

What could Harvey say to that? He didn’t even know how he felt, or if feeling was something he could even do anymore. He felt like a giant doll stuffed with cotton, which is to say, he felt nothing. 

When Harvey didn’t answer, Mike just kept talking. “So Raina or Dr. Mendez probably told you that they’re moving you tomorrow to this Safe Harbor place. Donna and I went up there to check it out and it’s like a five-star hotel believe it or not. I almost wanted to stay there,” he said, smiling. “It’s practically around the corner from your building. Psychiatric care for the upper east side elite.” 

When Harvey still said nothing, Mike’s smile faltered and he came to the edge of the bed. Harvey turned away from him, but Mike came around to the other side of the bed. “Seriously Harvey,” he pleaded, “you have to start talking to someone if you want to go home. We had you committed you know.” Committed. Harvey thought that maybe he should care more about that, but then he was just waiting for the opportunity to run. 

“Hopefully those antidepressants will kick in soon, and the therapists at this new place will get you talking about whatever the hell is going on with you,” Mike continued, sounding like his patience was thinning. “This silence is scaring the fuck out of me, Harvey. I almost wish you were yelling at me again.” 

Harvey just closed his eyes and waited, waited. 

The next day, or what he figured was the next day, after enduring several people talking at him some more, someone helped him into his running shoes and guided him into a wheelchair. They rolled him down the hall, into an elevator, down another hallway, and out into the afternoon autumn sun. Harvey turned his face up to the sky, squinting at the brightness, and before he knew what he was doing, he was bolting out of the chair intending to run, but he barely got two steps away before strong hands gripped him and held him pinned against something—the side of a van? He fought and fought but couldn't get free. There were voices, but he couldn't hear the words over the buzzing in his head. His face pressed against cool metal, he felt the sharp pinch of a needle into his hip, and then a slide into nothing. 

The next time Harvey was aware, he was in an unfamiliar room. Once he became more awake, he sat up and looked around to see that he was alone in the room, but the door was open, and someone would occasionally walk by in the hallway. His mouth tasted like shit, so he got out of bed and made his way to what he presumed was the bathroom, moving slowly due to his aching muscles. Both the bedroom and the bathroom were nicer than the hospital room he’d lived in for god knows how long. The colors were pastel blue and green and the floor in the bedroom was polished hardwood instead of the usual linoleum tiles. The room had two windows and an impressionistic landscape hanging on the wall. 

He heard someone walk into the room behind him, but he ignored them and went into the bathroom. There was no mirror in there, but he could feel the scruff on his face and knew he’d lost weight by how his clothes felt. His clothes. He was still in his own clothes. He suddenly remembered his aborted escape attempt. He was starting to realize there was no escape and he didn’t even know what he was escaping from or escaping to. 

After splashing water on his face and rinsing his mouth out numerous times, he looked around the bathroom and then the bedroom, still ignoring the man asking him something. It sort of looked like a hotel room, but a really boring one with nothing that could be moved or lifted up and no exposed electrical outlets. Yup, everything in this place was carefully designed to prevent a mental patient from hurting himself or others. What the fuck was he going to do? 

The next few days, Harvey settled into the routines of Safe Harbor. Mike was right; it was almost as comfortable as a luxury hotel, but there were some key differences, like the strict schedule. There was a time for meds, showering, breakfast, group therapy, art or dance therapy, individual therapy, outdoor time, yoga or meditation, exercise time, dinner, free time for reading or tv, and then bed. 

At first Harvey stayed in his cloak of silence. People, some staff, some patients, introduced themselves to him, but he ignored them. The medical doctor who checked his scar and rubbed it with some kind of lotion didn’t even bother speaking to him anymore. During group therapy, he refused to speak and studiously ignored the others. But he took his meds and showered in the morning, trying not to look at the long, livid scar on the inside of his forearm. He started to walk on the treadmill when it was offered, although for the other therapies he just sat there disengaged. He tried to think of it as a spa vacation. The food was actually pretty good, and maybe it was the drugs, but he started to feel like eating again. 

There was a new social worker he met with every day. Her name was Sandy and she was older and frumpier than the one at the hospital. There was a new psychiatrist too who he saw less often. Mostly they sat and stared at him. 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but one day Harvey decided to participate in the art therapy class just for something to do. He’d loved drawing as a kid and had inherited his mother’s artistic talent, although he hadn’t used it much since his teens, so he listened while the therapist said to visualize being lost at sea on a stormy night and seeing a glimmer of light leading to land. She said in a lulling tone, “Picture a lighthouse. If you row hard, you know you can make it. Warm food, dry clothes, and rest will be waiting at the shore.” He and the other participants, three women and another guy, sat around a horseshoe-shaped table with poster-sized sheets of paper in front of them. Numerous baskets were placed around the space with different materials—different types of paint, colored pencils, charcoal pencils, glue, various pieces of fabric and ribbon. The therapist told them to use whatever materials they wanted to depict a lighthouse as a source of guidance and to depict themselves in relation to the lighthouse somewhere in the image. She told them to add words too whenever possible to represent the source of guidance in their lives. 

Two of the women started in immediately and chatted with each other while they worked. He wondered why they were there. They seemed pretty normal. Harvey stared at the blank paper for a long time and thought of his source of guidance, and all that popped into his head were Mike and Donna. He missed them so badly all of a sudden, the feeling startling him so much he made a strange sound that caught the therapist’s attention. “Is everything ok, Harvey?” she asked him, suddenly by his side. 

“Yeah,” he said, and realized it was the first thing he’d said aloud since yelling at Mike however many days—weeks?—ago that was. It came out like a croak. 

“What do you see as your lighthouse?” she asked. 

Harvey picked up a charcoal pencil and began to sketch what he saw in his mind. He sketched and sketched without thinking about what he was doing or why. When the hour for art therapy was up, the therapist gently gripped his hand to get him to stop. He must have ignored her telling them time was up. “That’s beautiful, Harvey. Who are they?” she asked 

Harvey looked at what he’d drawn. It was a serviceable representation of Mike’s and Donna’s faces, side by side, looking frankly out at him. “Friends,” he answered. 

“They must be good friends if you see them as your guiding light,” she said, and when he didn’t respond, she asked, “Why didn’t you draw yourself?” 

He just shrugged and left the room for lunch, but after that he went to art therapy every day after his walk on the treadmill, and he started talking a little more, thanking staff members when they helped him with something, saying “ok,” when the social worker asked him how he felt. 

He even asked the on-call nurse at the desk what day it was. She showed him the calendar. With a few more questions he determined that he’d been at Presbyterian Hospital for a week, and Safe Harbor for over two weeks. 

That afternoon he had an appointment with the psychiatrist, Dr. Luria, his third, he thought, since he’d been there. At the first two sessions, he had just sat there mutely, so the doctor just talked at him about his medication, observed him, and typed on her computer. For all he knew, she was writing her personal emails. 

This time when she asked him how he was, he said, “Better, I think.” 

“He speaks!” she said with a broad smile. She looked like a middle-aged Republican political candidate from the Midwest with her stiff blond bob and conservative business casual attire. “I’d consider that better. If I ask you some questions, will you answer?” she asked. 

Harvey considered that. “Maybe,” he conceded. 

“I’ll take that. Before I ask you anything, is there anything you would like to ask me or tell me?” 

Harvey knew he used to be quick-witted and fast-talking, but he didn't know where that person had gone. He wondered if he was real, if he’d ever come back. “Um, no,” he said after awhile, “Except that I don’t feel like myself.” 

“Can you explain what you mean by that?” she prompted. 

Could he? “Not really,” was the answer he settled on. 

“Harvey, do you know where you are?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

“Where are you?” she asked. 

“In a mental hospital?” he said. It came out as a question, although he knew it was true. 

“Yes, a psychiatric hospital,” she agreed and typed something on her keyboard. “Do you know the name of it?” 

He thought maybe someone had told him that, but he couldn’t think of it. “No,” he said. 

“It’s called Safe Harbor,” she said and then asked, “Do you understand why you’re here?” 

Harvey thought. He wasn’t sure. But then he remembered his arm, how recently, or what he thought was recently, they had taken the stitches out and later someone told him he didn’t have to wear the sling anymore. He’d done that to himself, hadn’t he? And he wasn’t himself anymore. At the doctor’s questioning look he finally said, “Because of what I did and how I am.” 

“What did you do?” she persisted after typing some more. 

“You know,” he said, gesturing vaguely at his arm, “cut my arm.” 

“Can you tell me why you did that?” she asked, but her voice sounded a little further away. 

Harvey felt himself retreating again and couldn’t say a word, couldn’t even shake his head. 

“Harvey, you don’t have to tell me now,” she said, her voice coming through a tunnel. “I’d like you to keep talking though, ok?” 

Harvey didn’t answer, keeping his eyes on the wood grain of her desk. He didn’t want to be there anymore. 

“Marina, the art therapist, has been showing me your artwork from the past three days,” she continued. She was now sitting in a chair next to him instead of behind her desk. “You’re a talented artist. Have you always enjoyed art?” 

Harvey shrugged, his eyes losing focus as he stared at the desk. 

“Is art something you don’t want to talk about?" 

Harvey thought of his mother painting in her rickety old garage studio, smiling, Marcus toddling nearby. His father taking pictures. They were all smiling. 

Harvey didn’t realize he was sobbing until Dr. Luria held a box of tissues right in front of him. He took a tissue and pressed it to his face. He cried and cried, unsure why or how much time passed, but when his tears settled down, Dr. Luria was sitting in the chair beside him, watching him patiently. “How do you feel?” she asked as he wiped his eyes and then blew his nose. 

Harvey hated that fucking question. “Like shit!” he shouted, although the doctor didn’t even flinch. “How do you think I fucking feel?” She was probably used to people sobbing out of nowhere and shouting at her. 

“I don’t know how you feel precisely,” she said, “but I know pain when I see it. I’m so glad you’ve started to talk again.” 

Harvey nodded and sat sniffling for awhile, thinking of what he wanted to, or what he could, share with this woman who was a stranger to him but seemed nice. He tried to think back to how he was before he was in the hospital. He could see that person trying so hard to keep it together, as if all his effort was expended on keeping his guts from spilling out, on not drowning in his own panic. He realized he hadn’t had any panic attacks since waking up in the hospital. He’d just felt dead. And now maybe he was starting to wake up for real, but that wasn’t easy. Did he want to? 

“Are you having any suicidal thoughts right now?” the doctor asked softly. 

Harvey thought about that. Did he still want to die? He wasn’t sure he was ready to live, but he didn’t think he wanted to die either. “No,” he said. 

“Can you tell me why you cut your arm?” she asked. 

He was thrown by the repeated question. He couldn’t really remember doing it, but he knew he just couldn’t stop his thoughts. He wanted everything to stop, but it wouldn’t. “No,” he answered because he didn’t know how to explain it. 

“Did you intend to kill yourself?” she continued. 

“I don’t remember,” he said. “I was really drunk.” 

“Why were you so drunk?” she pressed. She just wouldn’t give up, and his head was starting to hurt. “Your friends seem to think it had something to do with a visit to your mother. Is that true?” 

Harvey waited for the panic to rise up, but it wasn’t there. Instead it was replaced with a deep well of sadness. Tears surged up again and he was weeping anew. He cried and cried. Unable to hold himself up on the chair anymore, he slipped to the floor and curled over his knees. He cried until his face felt swollen and he didn’t even know where he was anymore. When the tears finally stopped, he was somehow back in his room. Dr. Luria was there as well as Sandy, a nurse, and the aide who had helped him with his sling before. The nurse handed him a pill and a cup of water which he took without complaint. “That’s something to help you sleep,” Sandy said. “I’ll talk to you when you wake up. Ok?” 

When Harvey didn’t answer, everyone left except for the aide, a young black guy. Drew. Harvey’s sleepy mind provided the name. Drew helped him take his clothes off down to his t-shirt and boxers and helped him under the covers. 

The next day, Harvey followed his same routine—meds, shower, breakfast, group therapy where he still said nothing, art therapy, lunch, outdoor time in the courtyard, then a session with Sandy. The crying bout the previous day seemed to settle something in him. He’d almost felt ok all morning, or as ok as someone could be living in a psychiatric hospital. 

The first thing Sandy said when he sat down in her office was, “You had a big day yesterday. Can you tell me about what happened?” 

Harvey actually felt as if he could do this. He could talk. “Yeah, I guess so.” It wasn’t much, but it was a start. 

“Dr. Luria told me that she asked about your artwork and that’s when you started to cry. Can you tell me why?” 

Harvey took a deep breath and spoke. “I used to like art. My mother is an artist.” He felt his resolve slipping, but he actually said the word “mother” without imploding. 

“She also told me that you broke down when she asked you about meeting with your mother last month,” Sandy prompted. 

Harvey nodded. 

“Can you tell me why?” 

Harvey tried to say something, but he couldn’t find the words; he couldn’t even find the feelings he was feeling. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep from bursting into tears again. 

“You’re allowed to cry here Harvey, as much as you need to,” she said, which caused him to start where he’d left off the day before, but this time he would try to speak. He had to get something out. 

Through his sobs he choked out, “My mother...she did...some bad shit to me...when I was a kid.” It was the most he’d ever said in his whole life about what his mother did. Sandy sat with him as he cried and cried all over again. At some point she held out her hand as an invitation and Harvey gripped it tightly. It felt strange to have said it aloud, like he was starting something new, but he wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad something. It was uncharted territory. 

When he’d settled down a bit, Sandy asked, “Did she physically abuse you?” 

Harvey wasn’t sure how to answer that. His mother had never hit him, if that’s what she meant. 

Seeing him struggling internally with his answer she asked, “Did she sexually abuse you?” 

Harvey gripped her hand tighter and nodded in affirmation. There. It was out. Someone knew. 

“Ok, Harvey, I can tell it took a lot for you to answer that question. Have you ever told anyone about this before?” 

Harvey shook his head and started to shiver. 

“Is it ok if I let go of your hand to get you a blanket?” 

Harvey forced himself to let go. Cold and alone, he felt like he was back there in his bed at five, at nine, at thirteen, at fifteen, all the many times his mother had visited his bed at night. He got very still and quiet like he did back then. He didn’t want to wake Marcus. 

Harvey wasn’t sure what happened, but the next time he woke up, he was back in his room on top of the bedspread but covered with a blanket. By the light outside, it was probably early evening. Dr. Luria was sitting in a chair, looking at a laptop. Didn’t he just see her yesterday? He didn’t usually see her so soon again. He cleared his throat and she looked up. 

“Harvey,” she said, rising to approach him. “Do you remember what happened in Sandy’s office?” 

Harvey sat up and stretched. His muscles ached as if he’d run a marathon. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and thought. “Not really,” he said. 

“Do you remember the last thing you told Sandy?” she asked. 

Yes, he did, but he didn’t think he could say it out loud again, so he nodded. 

“She told me that you indicated to her that your mother sexually abused you as a child?” 

Harvey gulped, hearing her say it so bluntly like that, but it was out there now, and hearing her say it diminished its power slightly. He still couldn’t say it himself, so he gave a slight nod. 

“How are you feeling right now?” 

How was he feeling? Not that good, but he didn’t feel dead anymore either. “Ok,” is what he settled on. 

“You went into shock in Sandy’s office. That’s why you were shivering. After that you dissociated for awhile. Do you know what that means?” 

Yes, he did. “I lost it,” he said. 

She smiled sympathetically and said, “That’s one way of putting it, but the clinical term is dissociation. It’s fairly common in survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Are you aware of any times in the past where you’ve lost time?” 

Was that what he was now, a survivor of sexual abuse? Harvey thought of all the times in his life from childhood to now where he checked out for a bit. He’d come to think of it as “autopilot,” when he got upset about something and he just ended up somewhere or doing something without thinking about it. It sometimes even served him well in his professional life. Things just got done when he was trying to avoid his own emotions. “Yeah, I guess that’s happened.” 

“I’ve got to say, Harvey,” she said, “it’s amazing how high-functioning you’ve been all these years despite carrying this trauma around with you untreated your whole life. The fact that you’re a name partner at a top New York City law firm is a testament to your strength of character. It’s very impressive.” 

Harvey didn’t know what to do with that kind of compliment. He used to think he was pretty damn impressive and had no qualms about being arrogant about it, but he was really overcompensating, and he didn’t feel strong anymore. He also didn’t know if he’d be a name partner for long. He hadn’t even thought of the firm at all lately, but then he’d hardly thought about anything lately. 

“So Harvey,” she said, “now that we know what’s at the root of the problems you’ve been having, we can start with a more comprehensive treatment plan.” 

He looked at her with curiosity. Was there a cure for all this? He’d taken medication before. He’d talked to a therapist and look at where it had gotten him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, feeling his muscles tighten in anticipation of her insistence. 

“That’s ok, Harvey,” she said. “instead of traditional talk therapy, we can try one of the newer cognitive behavioral therapies that don’t require lots of talking.” 

“Really, there’s therapy like that?” 

“Yes, there’s a therapy called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and another newer one called Progressive Counting, that have proven to be very successful with treatment of those with childhood trauma or PTSD. They’re both used a lot with military veterans.” 

“Eye movement?” Harvey asked, skeptical. “Counting, like numbers?” 

“Yes, I’ll show you some videos that explain the process for both and you can tell me which you would prefer,” she explained as if discussing buying real estate or a new car with him. “Sandy is trained in both and she’s the one who would be doing it with you.” 

“Ok,” he agreed. This felt safe, being presented with information and making a choice. 

“What I think you’ll like about these treatments is that they don’t require that you talk a great deal about your traumatic experiences, and it’s more efficient than talk therapy,” she explained further. 

He thought of all those sessions with Dr. Agard when it was painful to even tell her lies. “Sounds too good to be true,” he said skeptically. 

“It’s not,” she countered with confidence. “I can show you the data on success rates if you need convincing.” 

“I’ll watch the videos,” he said. 

The world kept spinning around, even though Harvey was taking a break from it all. Mike did his best to focus on his work at the clinic, prepping Marissa for court since Nathan’s motion to allow her to represent Sophia despite being a third-year law student went through. He had to deal with Oliver’s hurt feelings at Mike not having faith in his abilities, and Nathan’s annoying habit of reminding Mike of everything he couldn’t do since he wasn’t a lawyer. In addition to the primary case he was working on with Oliver and Marissa, he was also overseeing the twelve other law students at the clinic and helping them with their own work. But at least the clinic was a distraction from the sad facts of his life: Rachel had moved out, he’d have to sell his apartment because he wouldn’t be able to afford it anymore if he wanted to keep any of his savings, and Harvey was still in the nut house. 

The good news was that, at the end of week two at Safe Harbor, the social worker called to say that Harvey had a breakthrough and started to speak. His new psychiatrist, Dr. Luria, said his medication seemed to be making a difference and that Harvey had started to respond to staff at least with a few words. He was eating the food there, which Mike had seen himself and thought looked as good as anything he’d had in quality restaurants, and was even exercising, jogging lightly on the treadmill. He still wouldn’t talk to Mike or Donna or anyone else on the phone, and still didn’t want any visitors, but Mike had hope that Harvey would talk to him soon. He couldn’t wait to hear his voice. 

Mike had no idea what was happening at Specter Litt anymore, even though he spoke to Donna on the phone several times a week, except that in Harvey’s absence, she’d been promoted to a supervisory position and was now in charge of the entire clerical staff. Otherwise, they only spoke about Harvey. Donna told him nothing else about the firm, and Mike didn’t ask. If he thought too much about Harvey’s future at the firm, he got depressed and anxious. Would it be possible for Harvey to come back from this and just go back to his old job, closing clients and kicking legal ass? Would he want to? 

Because Harvey had been committed, being his health care proxy gave Mike access to his finances to pay the hospital everything that insurance didn’t cover, and Mike couldn’t believe how much money Harvey had, how well he’d invested. Despite all his spending on the finer things in life, and the current shitload of money being spent on this private psychiatric facility, his net worth was still over twenty million dollars, which included his penthouse apartment, so Mike wasn’t worried that Harvey would be out on the street any time soon, but if and when he was back to “normal,” Mike didn’t think any of his remaining clients would be loyal enough to want to come back to him after such a long unexplained absence. It was already almost a month since the suicide attempt, and he assumed Louis and the others couldn’t keep telling Harvey’s clients that he had been in some vague accident. They probably already told them some version of the truth. For all of Harvey’s talk of loyalty, Mike knew firsthand that the corporate universe was not a place where loyalty took precedence over money. 

Mike had a fantasy that when Harvey was better, Mike would go back to school, get his bachelor’s and his JD the legal way, and he and Harvey could go into business together somehow, maybe start some kind of small legal aid clinic that concentrated on pro bono business cases, like helping victims of corporate greed and low-income entrepreneurs. With Nathan, Professor Gerard, and any other non-Pearson Specter Litt-related references he could find, maybe he could make his case to NYU or Columbia that he deserved to be given another chance, that despite being a fraud with a felony conviction, he could do more good as a legit lawyer than an underpaid legal clinic supervisor. He couldn’t wait to talk to Harvey about it once he was more stable. 

The next week, he got another call from Sandy about Harvey’s progress. She said he’d had a major breakthrough and they had a new treatment plan. Mike was ecstatic, but he wished he knew more. However, she was only allowed to tell him what Harvey gave her permission to share, which was pretty much nothing. “Can I come see him yet?” he asked. 

“Well, yes, that’s also why I’m calling. Harvey says he’s ready to talk to you and Donna. Can you come to evening visiting hours tonight?” 

There was nothing that could stop him. 

After work and a quick bite to eat, Mike headed up to Safe Harbor, almost giddy with excitement, but then he told himself not to get his hopes up, that just because Harvey was allowing him to visit, didn’t mean that what he wanted to say to him was good. After all, Mike had had him committed. 

He parked his bike at the lamppost outside Safe Harbor, which he would never have recognized as a hospital if he hadn’t known. It was a modern eight story building nestled between apartment buildings, and it had an awning just like the apartment buildings did. The awning said Safe Harbor in tasteful script, and only if you looked at the placard by the entryway did you see the words: “Secure In-patient Psychiatric Services.” Donna had found the most highly rated and most expensive psychiatric hospital in the city, but despite the reputation and the cost, once he checked in, left his bag at the desk, and stepped past the lobby, it still definitely felt like a hospital masquerading as a hotel. Harvey’s floor had twelve patients, all with mood disorders, so it wasn’t uncommon to hear someone weeping or laughing maniacally. The décor was much nicer than a typical hospital, but it was simple without any extraneous furniture or decorations. Anything that could possibly be used as a weapon, such as chairs or lamps, were bolted down in one way or another, and there was the faint antiseptic smell of a place that was cleaned with industrial products on a regular basis. 

The nurse on call brought Mike to the common area where Harvey was watching a World Series game with two other male patients, one who didn’t look more than twenty and had a shaved head, and another who looked to be about sixty, wearing baggy clothes and muttering to himself. They all seemed as if they were alone in the room even though they were only a few feet away from each other. 

Mike took a moment to just take Harvey in. Without his monthly $300 cut, Harvey’s hair was a bit overgrown and tousled, and Mike thought it looked awesome without the usual product. He had started to look pretty thin the last time Mike had seen him, but now he looked closer to his previous weight. He wore khakis, a gray henley and running shoes, and apparently he’d stopped shaving because he almost had a full beard, although it was patchy in spots. He was as gorgeous as ever, but in a different way, like a soft-focus version of the old Harvey. 

Harvey twitched slightly when Mike sat in the seat beside him. “Hey,” Mike said, not sure what to expect. Since Harvey had yelled at him the first time he’d seen him in the hospital, he hadn’t said a word to him. 

Harvey kept his eyes on the game but said, “Hey,” and Mike wanted to do a little happy dance, but he didn’t want to jinx anything, so he figured he’d talk about the game. Mike didn’t care that much about sports, but he picked up all of the big stories and stats without even trying, so he asked Harvey a couple of questions about the pitcher, Gerrit Cole, since he knew Harvey had been a pitcher, and Harvey actually answered. His answers were short, and he still wouldn’t look at Mike, but he answered. 

Just when Mike began to run out of things to ask, the social worker, Sandy, appeared, her colorful tunic, warm smile, and wavy auburn hair out of place in the subdued air of the room. “Mike, it’s nice to see you,” she said, shaking his hand before turning to Harvey. “Harvey, why don’t you and Mike come to my office. We can tell him about some of the things we’ve been discussing. Ok?” 

Harvey nodded tightly but stood and followed Sandy down the hallway with Mike trailing behind. Mike liked Sandy. She was quirky , but from the one time they met and their phone conversations, she seemed kind, competent, and dedicated to helping Harvey. 

“Harvey, would you like to start?” Sandy asked when they were all seated, her in a cushioned chair facing Harvey and Mike seated on a sofa with a couple of feet between them. Mike wished he could sit closer but didn’t want to spook Harvey. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Harvey said, looking at his hands. Mike was glad to note that the scars on his hands had almost completely faded. He knew the same would never be true of the scar hidden beneath his left shirt sleeve. 

“Do you think you can tell Mike what you told me in our last session?” she encouraged him. 

“Not sure,” Harvey said, looking away. 

Mike realized he was holding his breath and let it out slowly, trying not to make a sound. 

“Ok, take your time,” she soothed and then turned her gaze to Mike. “Mike, is there anything you’d like to ask or tell Harvey?” 

Mike turned to face Harvey and without hesitation said, “I’m just really glad to hear your voice.” 

Harvey glanced up and acknowledged what he’d said with a nod. “Yeah, I’m starting to feel a little better.” 

“Good!” Mike almost yelled in his relief, but then could have kicked himself. He was having the hardest time knowing how to act around this new, vulnerable Harvey. “I mean, I’m so glad to hear that,” he said more softly. 

“Harvey, do you mind if I tell Mike a little bit about what we’ve been talking about in our sessions?” 

She and Mike both waited in silence until Harvey gave another small nod of permission. 

Sandy turned to Mike and said, “I know you and Donna felt that Harvey’s visit to his mother had something to do with his suicide attempt and depression, and Harvey told me recently that that is indeed the case.” 

Mike turned curious eyes to Harvey. “What happened?” he asked. He had a strong urge to put a hand on Harvey’s leg or back, to comfort him in some way, but he didn’t know if it was welcome, so he sat on his hand. 

Harvey just said, “I can’t,” as if even those two words were hard to get out. 

“It’s ok, Harvey, take your time,” Sandy soothed. She got up to sit beside him and took his hand. To Mike’s surprise, Harvey didn’t object. 

Harvey let out a deep breath and then said in a quiet rush, looking down at the floor, “She just...she did some shit to me when I was a kid and acts now like it didn’t happen and like I was the one who did something to her.” 

Mike’s head was spinning with all the different ways to take that. What kind of “shit”? With the severity of Harvey’s breakdown, he doubted it was normal parental “shit” most people complained about. Did she abuse him? Emotionally? Physically? Worse? “What shit?” was all he could say, not sure if he wanted an answer. 

Harvey sniffed, released Sandy’s hand, and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. 

“Mike,” Sandy said, apparently deciding that Harvey had talked enough. “Harvey says he doesn’t want to talk about the details, but we’ve established that he had considerable childhood trauma that he felt forced to revisit during his recent visit to Boston.” 

Considerable childhood trauma. Jesus. Mike didn’t want to think of Harvey being traumatized in any way, shape, or form. And by his mother? God, he hated her. He wanted to protect Harvey more than he’d ever wanted to protect someone before. More than Grammy, more than Trevor, more than Rachel. Thinking of something horrible happening to Harvey as a kid stirred such revulsion in him that he felt nauseous. Rachel and Donna were right. He loved Harvey. He tried to keep his breath even, not wanting to show Harvey how this news upset him. “What can I do to help?” he finally asked. 

Sandy got up and moved back to the chair. “Well, what you can do is continue to be the supportive friend you’ve been,” she said, smiling warmly at him, “but now that we have some idea of what Harvey’s problems are stemming from, we have a better treatment plan for him. Harvey, do you want to tell Mike about our treatment plan?” 

Harvey cleared his throat and seemed to be working up to saying something. It was so strange for Mike to see smooth-talking, quick-witted Harvey struggling so much with words. They waited patiently and eventually he spoke haltingly. “It’s called Progressive Counting, or PC. It’s...I don’t have to talk too much about...what happened...but I’ll picture...what happened...like a movie in my head, and then Sandy is going to do this counting thing, and the idea is that I’ll get desensitized to the memories.” 

Mike gave Harvey all of his attention, but was already itching to take out his phone, look up all the information he could find on this treatment, and commit it all to memory. “Counting?” he asked the therapist, perplexed that any kind of counting would help anything. 

She recommended a book about PC for him to read and explained the treatment process in a little more detail. It sounded too good to be true to Mike, but he wasn’t going to say that. Sandy seemed pretty confident it would help, and Mike would reserve judgement until he read the book and did some research. 

After she finished explaining and answering Mike’s questions, Sandy rose from her seat, seeming to signal that the meeting was over, but Mike didn’t want to leave yet. Time seemed to freeze for a moment as both he and Harvey stood up too. Mike wished he could stay all night or take Harvey with him. Instead, on impulse, he said, “Um, Harvey? Is it ok if I give you a hug?” He’d only hugged Harvey a couple of times before since they had known each other, but it just seemed like something both of them needed at that moment. 

Harvey looked at him, surprised, but he didn’t object when Mike looked back expectantly. “Yeah, ok,” he said. 

At first when Mike put his arms around Harvey, Harvey stood a bit stiffly, but Mike couldn’t seem to let go and just held on. Soon Harvey placed his own arms around Mike and hugged back. The longer it went on, the tighter Harvey’s embrace got, and he pressed his face into the side of Mike’s neck. Mike could feel damp tears against his neck, but Harvey didn’t make a sound. When they finally broke apart, Harvey wiped at his eyes, looking a bit embarrassed, but when they said their goodbyes and Mike left the building, he felt lighter than he’d felt since before he’d found Harvey on the floor of his apartment. For the first time since then, he felt like things might eventually be ok. 

After Mike’s visit, Donna came the next day for lunch. She seemed giddy to see him, but also nervous and unsure how to act, which was strange to see on Donna. Just like Mike, she wanted to hug, and Harvey was surprised to find that he liked all this hugging. She gushed over how good he looked and gushed over the food, keeping up a steady excited monologue throughout the meal. She told him a little bit about the goings on at the firm. He cringed hearing that Louis had decided to merge with Robert Zane, but found he didn’t care that much, and understood the spot that Louis was in with him gone. Harvey hadn’t thought that much about what he was going to do once he got back on his feet, but he couldn’t quite envision himself back at the firm after everything that had happened. 

She also told him that she’d been talking to Jessica on the phone and that she was very worried about him. “Do you think you’ll be able to talk to her soon? Louis would really love to see you too.” 

“Not yet,” was all he could say, looking away. He didn’t know how he was going to interact with them. He felt like he’d let a lot of people down. 

Donna paused and took a hard look at Harvey. “What do they say about how you’re doing and when you can go home?” she asked. 

“I’m doing a lot better,” he said. “I’m starting this treatment that my therapist is pretty confident about.” 

“Mike mentioned something about that,” she said. 

“You talked to Mike?” he asked, surprised that she would already know about what they’d just told Mike the day before. 

She gave him a strange look and then said, “He didn’t tell you?” 

“Tell me what?” 

“He’s been staying at my place for the past week,” she said. “He and Rachel broke up.” 

Harvey was struck speechless until Donna looked worried and said, “Are you ok, Harvey?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, shaking himself out of his shock. Mike wasn’t with Rachel anymore. Mike gave him a long hug the day before. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know how much Mike would want me to say,” she said, but he could tell she was itching to tell him about it, “but let’s just say that you made them both realize that they weren’t right for each other after all.” 

“Me?” Harvey said curiously. 

Donna looked at Harvey the way she always did when she thought he was being an emotional idiot. “Harvey,” she said, “Mike cares for you a lot.” 

Harvey just stared at her dumbfounded. Could she really mean what he thought she meant? 

“I don’t think I should say any more,” she said, reining herself in. “I think you and Mike need to talk about it.” 

Harvey felt a swell of hope in his chest. Could he really have some kind of future with Mike, even with how fucked up he was? 

“Harvey, I need to say something else,” Donna said and then paused, her mood shifting. “I’m so, so sorry I pressured you to go to Boston. If I had known what would happen...” 

Harvey stopped her with a raised hand. “Stop, Donna. It had nothing to do with you. This shit would have caught up with me sooner or later. I was the one who decided to go, and the trip just got me there faster.” It was the most he’d said to anyone in forever and he suddenly felt exhausted. 

“I just can’t bear the thought of losing you,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I was so scared for you. I still am.” As if by silent mutual agreement, they clasped hands atop the table. 

Harvey thought back to another time when, afraid that he would fall on his own sword to save Mike, Donna had told him that she didn’t want to lose him, had assured him that he was worthy. He didn’t know if he’d ever get past the guilt for what he’d done, what he’d put her through. He’d definitely come to the conclusion with both Dr. Luria and Sandy that he didn’t want to die anymore, that he was committed to figuring out how to live again. “Donna, I’m not going to say everything’s ok yet,” he told her, being as honest as he could, “but I promise never to do anything like that again.” 

“God, Harvey,” she almost sobbed, using her napkin to dab at her eyes and prevent her mascara from running, “you don’t know how much I needed to hear that. I love you, you know.” 

Harvey squeezed her hand, sure now that Donna didn’t want anything more from him than what he was able to give. “I know,” he told her. “I love you too, Donna.” 

After a week of difficult preparation sessions for PC, identifying the traumatic memories to focus on, Sandy told Harvey that they were ready to do PC. Once Harvey confessed that there were more incidents of his mother “doing shit” to him than he could even remember, and that he’d been assaulted at fourteen by someone else as well, Sandy decided that for the PC sessions they should focus on three groupings of memories: times from about seven to thirteen where he remembered being ashamed by what his mother was doing, times she had sexual intercourse with him from thirteen to around fifteen, and the discreet incident when he was assaulted by his dad’s drunk friend at fourteen. They would work through the memories chronologically, and if more memories came up during the treatment, they could work on those too. 

It took a long time and a lot of tears for Harvey to speak even in the vaguest terms about these incidents, but Sandy assured him that he didn’t need to provide any more detail. For each of these memories Harvey would have to think through the memory from beginning to end as if it were a movie. While the movie played in his head, Sandy would be counting, at first from one to ten, then from one to twenty, and so on until she would count from one to one hundred, or until he wasn’t distressed by the memory anymore. 

At that point, almost two and a half months after Harvey had first arrived at Safe Harbor, Sandy suggested that Harvey might be ready to return home soon since he was functioning well and didn’t report any suicidal thoughts. He could just come in for his therapy sessions as an outpatient. It helped that his apartment was only a few blocks away. She thought it was best if Harvey didn’t stay alone yet, however. She told him that insurance would cover visits from a psychiatric nurse to check in on him daily, but he also might be more comfortable with a friend staying with him. 

Which brought him to Mike. The last time Mike had visited, he’d confirmed what Donna told him about breaking up with Rachel and told him how he was still at Donna’s and trying to sell his apartment and look for a new, smaller place. Harvey was hesitant to return to his own apartment considering what he’d done the last time he was there, but maybe if Mike was there, he’d be ok. He was afraid to bring it up to Mike though, not sure what he’d think. Was he being too presumptuous? 

Mike had been coming to see him every day since Harvey had told Sandy he could visit. They had kept their conversations fairly light, mostly just watching tv together in the common room, sitting out in the courtyard, or eating a meal together. Harvey had worked up the courage to show Mike some of his artwork, which Mike had fawned over, but they hadn’t talked at all about what was going on between them or what it would mean once Harvey re-entered the world. 

Harvey decided to bring it up to Sandy and she suggested having a session with Mike so she could facilitate a conversation between the two of them, and he agreed. 

“I don’t know if I can go back there,” was Mike’s immediate reaction, a look of horror on his face, when Sandy suggested Mike stay with Harvey in his apartment when he went home. 

It took a moment for Mike’s words to register with Harvey, but when they did, he felt a wave of guilt. He’d forgotten that Mike was the one who found him, and he hadn’t given much thought to how gruesome that must have been. He was told he lost almost half his blood, after all. Harvey just closed his eyes, pained by Mike’s reaction, although he completely understood it. Donna had told him that she hired a special cleaning service to do a deep cleaning of the apartment, and she’d had the blood-stained section of the hardwood floor replaced, but he realized the image was probably forever burned into Mike’s amazing brain. “Sorry,” he said, wrapping his arms around his chest, suddenly cold. 

Mike turned to him and sighed. “No, I’m sorry, Harvey,” he said. “It’s just I see it in my dreams sometimes, but I do want to help.” 

“Mike, you have every right to decide this isn’t something you can do,” Sandy assured him. “You were traumatized as well.” She paused for a moment as if thinking and then said, “Maybe you would like to do a session of PC yourself? Usually for a one-time traumatic event such as this, it only takes one session for you to be able to process the trauma, which might make you feel ok about staying with Harvey.” 

Mike looked skeptical but agreed. 

After his PC session with Sandy the next day, Mike was ready to stay with Harvey, and he now knew what Sandy meant about PC being exciting. He thought she was loopy when she first explained it to him, but after reading the book she gave him and reading several articles, he realized there was something to it. In one day he went from disturbing, intrusive thoughts and nightmares of Harvey bleeding out, to being able to think about finding Harvey after the suicide attempt with no more than regular concern for Harvey getting well. 

Sandy had him identify the beginning of the “movie” of Harvey’s suicide attempt, which was before Donna called him, when he was just at the clinic working, and the end of the movie which was actually in the future when he was sure that Harvey was going to be ok. Then she had him close his eyes and play the movie in his head from beginning to end while she counted. The first set of one through ten was so fast that there was not much room for him to feel much, but the second set got more intense as he experienced the details of the blood shooting out of Harvey’s arm, his white face and blue lips, and the strong smells of alcohol and blood. He struggled with some hyperventilating, but Sandy talked him through it, and by the fifth time playing the movie to the count of fifty, he told her it felt about a two on a scale of one to ten, which meant it was only mildly distressing. After that, the focus of the movie started to shift in his head to the future part where Harvey was ok and smiling with those crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and he got down to a zero for his level of distress. 

The whole experience was amazing and kind of empowering. He was so excited for Harvey to go through it and excited to stay with Harvey at his apartment. If only this therapy had been around when he was a kid. How much easier would it have made it for him to get through the earth-shattering loss of his parents. He’d always been told that talking about his grief was the only way to come to terms with it. As a kid he was so angry with God and the universe that he wouldn’t talk to Father Walker or the counselor they sent him to just to spite everyone, and then when he started talking, he was mostly sneering at whatever adult insisted he should do a certain thing or act a certain way. If he’d just been allowed to process the experience as a movie and distance himself from it, he might have been able to grieve in a healthier way, avoiding some of the brooding and floundering he did through much of his adolescence and young adulthood. 

“I’m in!” he told Harvey before he left Safe Harbor that night, and Harvey looked back in disbelief before smiling—the first smile Mike had seen on him since this had all started. 

When he got back to Donna’s place, he explained everything and took a couple of suitcases and some suits over to Harvey’s apartment. He left a few boxes with Donna for the time being, but he owned very little anymore. When he’d moved in with Rachel, she only let him bring a couple of things from his old apartment, like his Panda picture, nixing the majority of his furniture, and he had no problem leaving her all of the furniture and everything else they had bought together to fill her new place. If losing his parents and then his grandmother had taught him anything, it was that, as long as he had enough to eat and a roof over his head (and maybe a good bicycle), stuff really didn’t matter. 

Despite his amazement after his PC session the day before, Mike was still shocked at how entering Harvey’s apartment didn’t affect him badly. They had done a great job replacing the floorboards, and Mike would never have even noticed some of the wood was new if he didn’t know it. He put away his clothes in the guest room/home office, and spent the evening eating Chinese takeout on Harvey’s couch, watching Netflix on Harvey’s tv. The thought that Harvey was going to be sitting beside him probably doing the same thing the next night made Mike feel embarrassingly giddy. 

He had been thinking a lot about his conversations with Donna regarding being in love with Harvey. The more he thought about it, the more he knew it to be true. Mike had made up his mind. He was going to do this, be with Harvey in every way, if Donna was right and Harvey would have him. He didn’t usually ascribe to supernatural thinking, but what was this thing between Harvey and him if not fate? Harvey’s near-death on top of his own past losses made one thing clear to Mike—life was too short to not take chances where love was concerned. 

Walking down the street to his own apartment by himself felt surreal, as if Harvey were traveling back in time and into the future simultaneously, not fully inhabiting the present. Of course he had been outside in the safety of the Safe Harbor courtyard many times, but walking down the street in his neighborhood, going home, felt like freedom, both invigorating and terrifying. Donna had his packed bag delivered to the apartment earlier, but Harvey had wanted to actually walk home by himself in the crisp winter weather, and Sandy and Dr. Luria had agreed he was ready for that step. So much in his life was still uncertain—whether he would return to the firm, the nature of his relationship with Mike—but at least he had the familiarity of his own home to return to. 

He’d bought his penthouse apartment after making partner, after his dad died. He liked to think of it as his version of Superman’s fortress of solitude with floor-to-ceiling windows and a glass elevator instead of jutting ice crystals. The apartment had wowed many a sexual conquest, but he seldom invited them back. Scottie had lived there for about a month, but she always felt like a temporary guest to him, and he knew she had felt the same, which was part—one small part—of the problem with them. The apartment with its light, open spaces and cool, modern surfaces felt like the only place he could relax, and that month with Scottie inhabiting his comfortable space was...difficult. 

Tom greeted him in the lobby with a big grin on his face. He wondered what Donna had told him because the guy didn’t ask him where he’d been or anything about his three-month absence. Harvey figured he would be feeling this discomfort a lot—not knowing what people knew or didn’t know about what had happened to him. Donna told him that they’d only told the firm’s employees and clients in the vaguest terms that he was taking a leave of absence, so he imagined any client or coworker he encountered would ask him where he’d been. It made him wonder if he should start his professional life over in some way. He still wanted to be a lawyer, obviously. He loved the law, but he wasn’t sure he could go back to the firm as if nothing had happened to him, especially if it meant Robert Zane would be his new boss and would see him as weak. Sandy had told him to not focus on his career until he was finished with his PC sessions, and then when he was more stable, they could revisit his professional plans. 

Harvey slipped his key into the lock of his front door and savored the moment he stepped back into his home. He inspected the area where Donna had told him the floorboards had been replaced. He barely remembered that night, and he definitely didn’t remember bleeding out all over the floor, thankfully. But he did remember the feeling of wanting everything to stop, of wanting to end his acute pain once and for all. He breathed in and out, in and out, and reminded himself that Sandy, Dr. Luria, Mike, and Donna were all just a phone call away if he felt like he wasn’t ready for this. But he was—he was ready to be Harvey Specter again, or maybe a more authentic version of him. 

Since elementary school, Harvey had always been a workaholic. If he took too much downtime from work, he would have had to think too much about his inner life, and introspection had been his enemy since he was a child. Now that he was confronting his painful childhood memories, all he was doing was introspecting, which was exhausting. He had been going to bed at around nine o’clock lately, whereas going to bed at midnight used to be an early night for him. 

Although he was trying not to think about the future too much while he was still rebuilding his sense of self, he couldn’t help that his thoughts sometimes strayed to the idea of working with Mike again. Maybe they could start a small firm together and Mike could be a “consultant.” He tried to end those fantasies as soon as they began, however, because the last time he tried to get Mike back working with him, it had been disastrous 

Harvey checked the fridge to see that someone, Donna presumably, had stocked his fridge with all manner of healthy foods. He doubted Mike was responsible. He grabbed an apple and ate it as he took a tour of his own home to see if anything had changed. In his home office, he noticed an unfamiliar gray suitcase beside the dresser. Mike. He opened a drawer to see t-shirts and several pairs of boxer shorts in a variety of colors. Was it creepy that he ran a hand over the soft fabric? Probably. Harvey shut the drawer and sat on the day bed that had always been there in case he’d ever had a guest who he wasn’t sleeping with, but he’d never had such a guest, so the bed and the neutral beige bedding on it was still brand new even though it was seven years old. Mike had slept in it the night before and would sleep in it tonight. Exhausted from his big day, Harvey decided to lie down and rest awhile. 

Mike finished up at the clinic as early as he could and biked up to the upper east side. He waved to Tom and got onto the elevator. He and Donna had to have a conversation with both of the doormen at Harvey’s building about what was going on. The other doorman, Raul, had been there when the ambulance arrived, and Harvey had been carried out on a stretcher. The building’s management knew that work had been done on the floor of the apartment due to blood stains. Surely they could figure out what had transpired, but Donna merely told the doormen that Harvey was recovering from a long illness, that they shouldn’t talk to him about it, and that Mike would be staying with him for an indefinite period. One of the benefits of living in an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan was that nobody asked too many questions. 

When no one answered his knocking, Mike started to get worried and fumbled for his key, but just as he was about to use it, the door opened and there stood Harvey, looking like he’d just woken up, with squinty eyes and mussed hair. He wore a henley and jeans and his feet were bare. Mike was struck speechless by how beautiful he looked. 

“Hey,” Harvey said. 

“Hey, did I wake you?” Mike asked, walking into the apartment as Harvey held the door and stepped aside in invitation. 

“Yeah,” Harvey admitted, looking sheepish. “My energy level isn’t back to normal yet.” 

Mike wondered if Harvey’s medication also made him sleepier than usual. He’d read up on imipramine and learned that drowsiness could be one of the side effects. He wanted to ask Harvey about it and if he had any other side effects, but he held himself back. After all, Harvey had a psychiatrist to monitor the effects of the medication and Mike shouldn’t intrude. “Did you eat dinner yet?” he asked, when he really wanted to ask Harvey how it felt to be back home. 

“No,” Harvey answered. “Donna stocked the fridge though.” 

Mike followed him into the kitchen. “How do you know that I didn’t do it?” he asked, smiling because he already knew the answer. 

“Because there’s a lot of fruit and vegetables,” Harvey said with a wry smile, and just for a second Mike saw the old Harvey, and it was like they were back at the firm teasing each other. 

Despite all the healthy food in the apartment, they still ended up ordering pizza and watching a movie. 

A few days after Mike came to stay with him, Harvey got the flu. He felt like shit, not just because he had chills and couldn’t breathe right, but because he and Mike had just started to get comfortable around each other and now Harvey was afraid Mike would see him as weak or needy or something else undesirable. He also had to miss his therapy appointments that week. 

He told him not to, but Mike took a day off to stay with him while he sat up in bed coughing and blowing his nose all day, alternately burrowing under multiple blankets because he was freezing and throwing them all off because he was hot and sweaty. He’d already been to the doctor, who speculated that his extended stay in the hospital probably lowered his immunity, and as soon as he was out, he had probably been exposed to one of the variety of bugs traveling around New York City in winter. The doctor said most cold and flu medications could exacerbate antidepressant side effects, so basically Harvey was just taking steamy showers multiple times a day. 

Donna brought over some soup, but Harvey couldn’t eat that much. He’d doze off, but was having confusing, disturbing dreams that he couldn’t remember when he woke up. He thought of that one time when he was nine and came home from school early after throwing up to find his mother with “Cousin Scott,” and how she’d quickly ushered him into his room while the guy left. She’d spent the afternoon coddling him, reading him comic books and doing all the voices, making him laugh. She gave him medicine for his stomach and sat with him until he fell asleep and didn’t do any of the touching she did at night. There were good times. 

“Hey, hey,” Mike said, putting an arm around his shoulders, and Harvey realized he was crying. “Harvey, what’s the matter?” 

He couldn’t speak, and didn’t know why he was crying, but he felt like shit, and now that he was crying, he felt even more stuffed up than he was before. His head hurt and he had a weird, shivery ache in his joints. 

Mike handed him some tissues and Harvey tried to blow his nose, but it was too stuffed for that to work, so he just used them to wipe his face. With Mike’s arm around him, he was able to calm down and stop crying. He felt too shitty to be embarrassed about whatever that was. 

Mike snuggled in closer, shoving him over so he could get on the bed beside Harvey and prop himself up on the pillows with him. “You ok now?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Harvey said, feeling exhausted and ready to slip into sleep again. “It sucks being sick.” 

“Did you have a bad memory or something?” Mike asked. 

Harvey could tell he was trying to be nonchalant, as if asking him if he had a headache. The arm around his shoulders felt so nice. “A good one actually,” he answered, his voice sounding like he was speaking from under water, “about my mother.” He pressed his hot face against Mike’s cool neck, not caring if he was getting snot on him, not caring about anything but trying to feel a little better. 

Mike let him snuggle closer, and once they were both settled and relaxed, he spoke quietly. “I know it’s not the same thing at all, but my dad and I used to butt heads a lot. I could be a smart aleck know-it-all, if you can believe that,” he said with a chuckle, “and my dad was no dummy, but he was kind of a regular guy, and he didn’t always know how to deal with me and my weird brain. It rubbed him the wrong way that I could beat him in an argument or that I knew more about a lot of things than he did.” Harvey tried to listen, to figure out why Mike was telling him this, but sleep was pulling him under. “Anyway, there were fights,” Mike continued, “but I always loved him. Love is complex.” 

Harvey’s brain was too fuzzy to think too much about what Mike was saying, but he felt that it was right, and as he slipped back into an uneasy congested sleep, he thought he felt Mike’s soft lips brush his fevered temple. 

“Do you think we should bring him back to the doctor?” Harvey heard Donna say as he resurfaced. His eyes felt crusted shut and he still couldn’t breathe through his nose, but he didn’t feel as achy or feverish. 

“Maybe,” Mike answered. “He was pretty out of it earlier. Did you bring the thermometer? If his temperature is high, we’ll take him.” 

“Awake,” Harvey said from his nest of blankets. “I’m awake.” 

“Oh good,” said Donna, and he opened his eyes as he felt her stick something in his ear. 

“Hey!” he protested, but realizing it was a thermometer, he endured until the thing beeped. 

“One hundred point two,” she declared. “That’s not too bad, is it?” she asked Mike who stood beside her. Mike looked adorably rumpled in sweatpants and a hoodie with his hair sticking up in tufts, and Harvey wondered if he had been on the bed with him for a long time. He hoped he didn’t get him sick. 

“No, that’s not that bad,” Mike agreed. He held out a tall glass of orange juice to Harvey who pulled himself up to fully seated on the bed. “Here Harvey,” he said as Harvey took the glass, “and there’s chicken soup too.” 

That sounded really good to Harvey. 

Donna set a bag down on the bedside table saying, “and I brought some other things the doctor said you could use like saline nasal spray and vapo-rub.” 

Harvey grabbed the nasal spray and examined it, overcome for a moment by his friends’ generosity and thoughtfulness. “Thanks, guys,” he said when he felt like he could speak without crying. 

It took about a week for Harvey to recover from the flu, but since that day where he had snuggled up to his feverish friend, Mike did whatever he could to close the space between them, both emotional and physical. During their nightly movie or tv sessions, he sat close enough to Harvey for them to occasionally brush up against one another and tried to steer their conversations towards topics beyond small talk, telling Harvey about his breakup with Rachel and about his feelings of frustration at the clinic, and asking Harvey about how he was feeling. 

One night as the two of them navigated around each other in the kitchen assembling a homemade meal, as they were trying to do more often, Mike decided to take a risk and say, “So Harvey, I’ve been thinking. What if we became partners and hung up our own shingle?” 

“What, you mean start our own firm?” he asked, looking up from the garlic he was chopping. At first Mike had been concerned with all of the knives in the kitchen, but Dr. Luria had assured him that Harvey was no longer considered a suicide risk. 

“Yeah, I mean, I’ve been thinking of going back to school and doing it right, but while I’m in school, I could be your paralegal and we could start a pro bono legal clinic specializing in victims of corporate malfeasance. We could be like legal superheroes fighting for good!” Mike felt a bit silly voicing it aloud, especially faced with Harvey raising his eyebrow skeptically. He loved the look though—it was one of Harvey’s signature expressions, and seeing it made him think his Harvey was back. 

Harvey stopped what he was doing and turned to face Mike. “It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this,” he said. 

“Yeah, I’ve done a lot of research,” Mike said excitedly. “I’m in the process of writing a business plan and I’ll do a presentation for you when I’m done, PowerPoint and all.” 

Harvey looked amused. “And what makes you think I’m not going back to the firm?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Mike said flirtatiously, taking Harvey’s hand in his own. “Maybe I thought you might rather be with me.” He knew he was on thin ice, but Harvey hadn’t pushed him away yet every time he’d gotten physically close to him, and Donna had assured him Harvey was interested. 

Harvey lowered his eyes to their joined hands, his face turning serious. “Mike,” he said, his eyes filling with tears, “is this...you want this?” 

Mike took his other hand and then pulled him in for a hug. “Yeah, I do Harvey,” his whispered into his ear. “If you’ll have me.” 

Their embrace tightened, and Mike loved the way their faces fit so neatly against each other’s necks. He’d never been with a woman as tall as himself before. He breathed in Harvey’s clean scent. 

“Can’t believe this is happening,” Harvey mumbled against his skin. “I’m a guy, and I’m really screwed up, Mike.” His voice broke on Mike’s name. 

Mike loosened his grip around Harvey and pushed him back so their foreheads were pressed together. Mike placed his hands on Harvey’s cheeks and separated their faces. Harvey’s eyes were closed, his cheeks wet with tears. “Harvey, look at me,” Mike whispered. “Let’s be screwed up together.” 

Harvey opened his eyes. They were so dark and vulnerable. 

“I wanna be with you,” Mike encouraged him. “I love you.” With that he kissed Harvey on the lips for the first time, savoring the taste, feel, and smell of him, so different from all of the women he had kissed in the past. As soon as Mike made his move, Harvey went all in, moving his hands up to the base of Mike’s skull and deepening the kiss, licking into Mike’s mouth like a starving man. They made out for awhile, and Mike was in no rush to go further yet, although he was hard in his jeans. He just had to get used to this first, and they had all the time in the world. Plus, Harvey was the best kisser he’d ever experienced. 

Harvey seemed to have other ideas though, grinding their hardening cocks against each other through layers of fabric. He suddenly stopped and led Mike into the bedroom by his wrist and toppled them both over onto the mattress. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” he said, rolling Mike onto his back and starting to tug his t-shirt over his head. “Need to see you,” he barely whispered, and Mike sat up a bit to help him get his shirt off. Next, he started working on Mike’s pants. 

“Wait, wait,” Mike said, stilling Harvey’s frantic hands, suddenly feeling a bit panicked. He wanted Harvey, he did, but was a bit freaked out about what to do about that. 

“Sorry,” Harvey said, practically leaping off the bed, his hands raised, “Sorry.” 

Mike would have laughed at the sight of Harvey, his hair and clothes both mussed, his erection clearly tenting his pants, if he also wasn’t afraid of what to do with that erection. He’d never even touched a penis other than his own before. Instead he said, “Harvey, it’s ok, I just got a little freaked out. This is new territory for me.” 

“Ok, right,” Harvey said, crossing his arms, looking a little embarrassed, but the bulge in his pants was unwavering. He ran a hand through his hair and looked away. “I’ve just wanted you for so goddamn long,” he said in almost a whine that made Mike smile. 

“Maybe you could take off your clothes,” Mike suggested. 

“Yeah, ok, sure,” Harvey agreed and quickly removed everything. Mike was speechless, first at Harvey’s speed and lack of hesitation and then at the body he revealed. Harvey was...gorgeous. Despite having lost almost half his blood less than three months ago and being a recent mental patient, his body was lean and toned. Mike never thought a penis could be beautiful, but Harvey’s was perfectly proportioned to his body and flushed, his balls seeming just the right size and shape. 

“You should be a penis model,” Mike quipped, and they both laughed, which broke the tension. Even before Mike had consciously thought of Harvey sexually, he always wondered what all those suits concealed, and this was beyond his imaginings. Mike was also amazed at Harvey’s lack of modesty, especially with the long scar running the length of his left forearm. Despite being fairly confident in bed, Mike had always felt a little weird at first getting naked with a lover. He always felt his body was either too skinny or too doughy depending on what time of year it was and how much he was biking or eating, his skin too pale. Sitting on the bed in just his unbuttoned jeans, he felt self-conscious, but Harvey was looking at him as if hungry for him. He was amazed, considering all that Harvey had been through, that he was so unselfconscious. 

“Does it still hurt?” Mike asked, gesturing toward the scar, figuring they’s have to talk about it at some point. He just hoped Harvey would be ok with him bringing it up. 

Harvey looked down at it and ran his fingers over the slightly raised pink line. “Not much,” he said, shrugging. 

They both seemed frozen for a minute, unsure who should do something next, so Mike said, “Battle scar.” 

Harvey smiled softly and approached the bed. He reached out and caressed Mike’s face, then his neck and shoulder. “This ok?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Mike said, loving the sensation of Harvey’s touch on his skin. Harvey’s hard-on was now right in front of Mike. “Can I touch it?” he asked. 

“Of course,” Harvey said, moving even closer, “just tell me what you want.” 

Mike reached out and tentatively ran a hand up and down its length, eliciting a soft moan from Harvey. He then cupped his balls in his other hand, feeling the soft sac nestled in the coarse hair. Harvey placed a hand on Mike’s head as if to steady himself which emboldened Mike to lick his cock. It didn’t taste bad or anything, but Mike didn’t know if he would be that into it if not for Harvey’s reaction, which was to start trembling and letting out a low groan. “God Mike, I want your mouth on me so bad,” he moaned, running his hands through Mike’s hair. 

Mike reached his arms around Harvey’s waist and maneuvered him down to the bed beside him. He started to wriggle out of his jeans, and Harvey helped him until they both lay on the bed naked, facing each other. They started to kiss again, and Mike thought he could get used to this, just making out for hours. But he also liked that their erections were bobbing against each other like dueling swords. He smiled into Harvey’s mouth as he felt a hand on his cock, stroking firmly. He wished they had some kind of lube to ease the friction, but he didn’t know if Harvey kept that kind of thing around and he didn’t want to ruin the mood by running into the kitchen for some cooking oil. 

The thought was moot when all of a sudden Harvey broke their kiss and flipped himself around to take Mike’s cock deeply into his mouth. Mike’s toes curled and he let out an embarrassing yelp at the shock of Harvey’s warm, wet mouth on him. He’d been the recipient of many a blow job and had participated in his share of sixty-nines, but this was the first time there was a large leaking penis at the other end instead of a vagina. 

It was getting hard to concentrate with the things Harvey was doing with his tongue, but Mike gave it a go and took the tip between his lips, licking at the clear, slightly salty fluid. He did his best to mimic what Harvey was doing but couldn’t bring himself to take it too far down, afraid of gagging. Harvey seemed to have no such fears and Mike lost control when he felt Harvey’s lips all the way at the base of his cock. He couldn’t help thrusting, fucking Harvey’s mouth, but Harvey didn’t seem to mind, suctioning in a way that made Mike start to come with a shout. All he could do was grip onto Harvey’s butt cheek and ride out his orgasm as Harvey swallowed, hoping he didn’t bite down on the cock that was still in his mouth. 

Just as Mike’s ejaculation came to an end and he tried to continue his sucking, he felt Harvey’s cock pulse and then a jet of come on his tongue. He pulled off with the shock of it, only to get the remaining shots right in the face, and some even in his hair. Harvey started to shake with laughter. After it was over, Harvey turned around and started licking Mike’s face clean with a big grin on his face. Mike pouted for a few moments but then couldn’t help laughing himself, thinking of the picture they made. 

“That was...” Mike said when Harvey finished his tongue bath and he pulled Mike in against his body from head to toe, “...interesting.” 

Harvey pulled back a bit, a worried look on his face. “You didn’t like it?” he asked. 

“No, no!” Mike insisted, not wanting Harvey to ever think he didn’t want him. “That was one hell of a blowjob. I just mean my part of it. I think I need some practice.” 

Harvey relaxed and smiled, coming in for another long, sensuous kiss. “Baby, you with my come all over your face is the hottest thing I’ve seen in a long time. You did just fine.” 

“Baby?” Mike said. He’d had girlfriends call him that, but he always thought it sounded a little silly. 

“Got a problem with that?” Harvey asked, running his hand over Mike’s back, smoothing it down to his ass. 

Harvey’s warm hands on his chilling skin felt so good. “No, actually,” Mike said. “I don’t.” 

Mike started to shiver a bit and Harvey noticed. “Wanna take a shower with me?” he asked with a come-hither look and a confidence that reminded Mike so much of the old Harvey. 

The shower was amazing, with enough room for a lot more kissing and body exploration before they got out and ordered takeout, putting away their earlier food preparations for another time. Over Thai food, they talked more about their plans for the future and then later fell asleep in each other’s arms. 

Harvey ended up doing ten sessions of Progressive Counting with Sandy over a few months, and Harvey felt the results were nothing short of miraculous. During a session, Harvey would imagine a movie of a traumatic memory. He would start the movie in his head, imagining what came before the memory when he felt safe, like playing a game with his brother before bed, and then let the movie run through the traumatic event, and then end the movie when the event was over and he wasn’t in danger anymore, like when he would go off to school in the morning. At first playing the “movies” was painful and Harvey couldn’t get through the traumatic part without breaking down, but Sandy would remind him that it was just a movie and wasn’t happening and she’d count while the movie was playing, at first from one to ten, then one to twenty, progressively higher until one to a hundred. 

After the movie was over, Sandy would ask him to rate his distress level from one to ten and if the rating wasn’t zero, which it never was after the first time, they would replay that same movie several times, sometimes into multiple sessions, until he felt no distress at all thinking about the trauma. 

By the end of the course of treatment, Harvey was amazed that he could think about what had happened without feeling panicky or upset at all. He was still going to twice weekly therapy sessions with Sandy to talk about issues such as confusion about his mother’s gaslighting, his hurt about his brother choosing their mother over him, and his anger at his father for not protecting him. His biggest issue was the shame he felt at letting his mother molest him and have sex with him long after he was old enough and physically strong enough to resist. At 14, he could easily have punched his dad's friend in the face rather than just lying there, but the thought hadn't even occurred to him at the time. It was like he was one person out in the world who never took shit from anyone, and another person in the dark quiet of his bedroom, a placid doll. Sandy spent a lot of time explaining to him how he had been groomed his whole life to not resist in that bedroom and his passivity and dissociation during the incidents of abuse were likely the result of post-traumatic stress.

Sandy once brought up the fact that in the state of New York, Harvey could still sue his mother for childhood sexual abuse if he wanted to, but he decided not to because, not only would it be impossible to prove, but it would just cause more pain for Marcus and his kids than healing for himself. His mother was seventy years old, and Harvey felt almost positive that she had never abused anyone but him, but there would always be a niggling at the back of his mind that Lily had done something to Marcus’s kids. Sandy was helping him to compose a letter to Marcus, explaining everything. It was turning out to be about five pages long, and Harvey didn’t know if Marcus would ever read it all the way through, or if he did, if he would believe him or speak to him ever again, but he felt it was his best bet at making sure his nieces and nephew were ok and his best shot at repairing his relationship with his brother. 

They also speculated about whether Lily had been abused as a child. Harvey realized that she never talked about her childhood. He had known his maternal grandmother, who was so timid and unassuming that he didn’t feel he knew her at all, and his mother never said anything about her father other than that he was dead. Even if she had been abused, Harvey wouldn’t consider it an excuse for what she’d done, but at least it seemed like an explanation. He didn’t want to think of his mother as evil, but rather as a sick person who let her sickness infect him. Sandy had pointed out that, to his credit, Harvey had never abused a child despite his own childhood trauma. He’d never thought too much before about why he’d always known he didn’t want children, beyond the fact that they were high maintenance, but he wondered if unconsciously he’d been trying to protect his hypothetical children from himself. In any case, Harvey still considered his mother to be selfish and self-centered and had no plans to ever encounter her again. 

The progressive counting wasn’t a cure-all, but it allowed his mind to be calm enough to start understanding some of his maladaptive behaviors, like his serial one-night stands with women, his sometimes risky sex with men, his drinking, and his short temper. Now that he and Mike had started a relationship, he started to talk more to Sandy about his extensive sexual history, how sex had always served as a distraction for him, sometimes as a way to avoid emotional connection, and sometimes as a way to act out his aggression. He didn't want to use Mike for sex and screw up what he thought was the healthiest relationship he'd ever had.

No, the therapy didn't cure him, but it allowed him to start thinking about who he truly was and what he wanted. And two things were for sure—he wanted Mike, and he didn’t want to return to the firm. 

Almost five months after leaving his apartment on a gurney, Harvey stepped off the elevator onto the floor of the Zane Specter Litt offices. It was also his first time wearing a suit since then, and in his wool coat, he felt a bit stifled. He’d shaved, but didn’t get his hair cut, preferring the longer, product-free style Mike told him looked good. He’d talked through his plans with Mike, Donna, and even Sandy, a million times, but he was still nervous about seeing Louis after so long, still nervous about facing Robert Zane who had become his boss in his absence. It didn’t help that the first person he saw as he walked down the hall towards Donna’s new office was Rachel. She looked as put-together as always, but as he caught her eye, her gaze was cold. 

“Harvey,” she said with forced composure. “How are you doing?” 

He could tell she was sizing him up, looking for differences from the person she saw last, and saw her gaze settle on his hair. “I’m doing ok,” he answered. “Yourself?” 

“I’m well,” she answered. 

Harvey didn’t know what he’d expected her to do when he encountered her. Yell at him? Berate him for stealing her man? No, that wasn’t her style. Back when Mike went to prison and Harvey visited Rachel to commiserate, they had toasted, “To trouble,” with Mike being the trouble. At the time, he figured that if he couldn’t be with Mike, he could at least be near her, but it felt awkward to hear her talk about falling for Mike, and he was glad when his phone rang and Louis' call interrupted them. Now Harvey realized that he himself had been the real trouble between Mike and Rachel. 

“Are you coming back?” she asked, not sounding happy about the prospect. 

Harvey didn’t answer her question, instead saying, “I’m here to meet with your father and Louis.” He wondered how Rachel felt about working for her father after trying to avoid that very thing her whole career. It couldn’t feel good. 

An exuberant “Harvey!” from down the hall interrupted their awkward exchange, and as soon as Harvey turned toward the voice, he was engulfed in a tight bear hug from Louis. Saved by Louis again. Harvey had been on the receiving end of Louis’s hugs in the past and had always stood there stiffly not knowing what to do, but he’d become a hugger in the last couple of months and returned it warmly. For all of their extreme differences, and all of their competition and fights over the years, Harvey had a great deal of affection for Louis that he could finally embrace. Louis eventually released him and held him at arm’s length, getting a good look at Harvey. “You look great, Harvey. I didn’t know what to expect,” he said, rolling his eyes and making a face like a stereotypical crazy person. Leave it to Louis to always be tactful. 

“Uh, thanks?” Harvey answered with a tentative smile, not sure if he’d been complimented. “I didn’t get my head completely shrunk.” 

Louis just beamed back at him, clearly thrilled to see Harvey again. “Well, come, come,” he urged, leading him toward the conference room, “Robert is waiting for us. Let’s talk about getting you settled back in.” 

When Harvey had emailed Robert and Louis to set up a meeting, he was vague about the reason, but clearly Louis had assumed he wanted to come back to his old position. When they reached the conference room, Louis took his coat and hung it on the coat rack. Robert stood from where he had been seated and held out a hand to Harvey. “Welcome back, Harvey. You look well,” he said with a smile 

Harvey wondered what was going on in Robert’s head behind the polite expression. He and Sandy had talked a lot about how to deal with his embarrassment of people like Robert and Louis knowing about his suicide attempt and hospitalization. Until recently, Harvey couldn’t bring himself to show his face to any of them. It took him months to be able to call even Jessica and let her know how he was doing. But both Sandy and Mike had encouraged him to just be himself, to be honest, and if someone said something obnoxious, which was kind of Louis’s specialty, to not see it as a reflection of him, but as an indication of the other person’s issues. 

“Thanks, Robert. Congratulations on the merger,” Harvey said as they released hands and sat at the table, Robert at the head and Harvey and Louis on either side. Of course the merger probably would never have occurred if Harvey hadn’t been out of the picture, but that didn’t concern Harvey anymore. Louis was still grinning at Harvey like he couldn’t believe he was there. 

“So I assume you’re here to get up to speed with what’s been happening here in the last several months,” Robert said. “Is your medical leave coming to an end?” 

“Actually, Robert,” Harvey started, “That’s not why I’m here at all.” Harvey reached into his jacket and pulled out the folded letter he’d written a few days earlier. “I’m resigning.” 

The contrasting shift of emotions on Robert’s and Louis’s faces was almost comical, with a quickly hidden glimmer of relief on Robert’s face and an unconcealed look of hurt and disappointment on Louis’s face. Louis made a strange little strangling sound. 

“Harvey, why? What will you do?” he pleaded. 

Harvey almost wanted to hug him again. He’d have to keep in touch with the guy. “I have some plans in the works,” he said cryptically. He wasn’t about to talk about his plans to go into business with Robert’s ex-almost-son-in-law, an ex-convict without a law degree, in front of Robert. That wouldn’t go over too well, and it was none of his business anyway. 

“What about your clients?” Louis asked, seeming unable to conceive of Harvey leaving for good. 

“Well, they seem to have survived without me, no?” Harvey countered. 

“Yes,” Louis agreed, “but don’t you want them?” 

Harvey smiled. “You can have them, Louis,” he said, but Louis still stared at him in confusion. 

Robert cleared his throat and said, “Harvey, due to the shake-up at the firm before the merger and your prolonged absence, the firm is still running at a loss. You’re not going to get much pay-out if you suddenly leave, possibly nothing at all. In fact, you might owe us at this point.” 

Harvey had anticipated Robert being an asshole about his resignation, but he was still a little surprised to see him show his true colors so quickly. Still, he was prepared. “I’ve worked out the numbers, and I think you’ll find this fair,” he said, producing another document from inside his jacket. The document was actually a team effort between him, Mike, and Donna, a summary of all the money from Harvey’s partner buy-in and all the money he’d brought into the firm prior to his medical leave, minus the money he had cost the firm while on his hiatus. “The detailed version is on this,” he said, producing a flash drive from his pocket and placing it on the table. 

Robert looked over the document, and then to Harvey. “Ok, fair enough,” he conceded, because Harvey wasn’t really asking for much. “Who’s going to hire you though?” he asked. 

Harvey knew Robert was right. In the high-powered corporate legal world, an absence as long as his due to what he was sure everyone assumed, correctly, was a nervous breakdown, would cause any firm to avoid him like the plague. That was the beauty of Mike’s plan, though. They would be on their own, and their new clients wouldn’t care about their pasts. Sure, Harvey would be making exponentially less money than he used to, but he still had millions in savings and had invested well, not to mention his apartment which was currently worth ten million dollars. 

Between his savings from his short-lived investment banking career, his short-lived stint as junior partner, and the sale of his own apartment, Mike had his own tidy nest egg as well. With Harvey’s connections, they would have no trouble getting donors, and they would end up kicking so much greedy corporate ass winning class action lawsuits that the clinic would pay for itself. That was Mike’s theory in any case. Regardless if their new clinic could stay afloat, or if they ended up losing money, it seemed worth the risk. Harvey still liked his tailored suits and his apartment, but he could do without a lot of the luxury items he used to spend a fortune on like $1000 bottles of Scotch and fine dining several times a week. They would be fine. 

It took awhile for Harvey to answer the question, and when he did, all he said with an enigmatic smile was, “I have a plan.” 

Louis looked crestfallen, so when they all got up to leave the room, Harvey held him back by his sleeve. “Louis,” he said, facing him, “Do you want to come to my place to have dinner with me, Mike, and Donna tomorrow night?” 

Louis gaped like a fish for a few moments, making Harvey smile. “What?” he finally said. 

Harvey didn’t blame him. The thought of inviting Louis to his home for dinner would never have crossed his mind in a million years before. In fact, the last time he’d seen Louis, he’d been screaming in his face that he’s never be managing partner. He couldn’t see himself ever behaving like that towards anyone again. “Dinner,” he repeated. “My place. Tomorrow at 7:00.” 

Louis nodded tightly, looking like he was going to cry. “Of course, Harvey. I’d love to,” he said before giving him another short hug. “I’m so glad you’re ok.” 

Harvey could tell he was sincere. “I’m going to go see Donna,” he said, already heading down the hall. “See you tomorrow night!” 

It was a Saturday morning, and they were taking a moment for themselves after a busy week. Mike had been shuttling back and forth between his classes at NYU and setting up shop at their new downtown office space. He and Harvey had been interviewing and hiring a staff of law students and clerical staff, as well as applying for grants and meeting with a series of some of Harvey’s more upstanding and appreciative former clients to ask for donations. They already had a wait list of potential clients without even opening up shop yet. It looked like their plan was going to come to fruition, but it was taking up all of their time and Harvey missed all the alone time he used to have with Mike. 

Since they had gotten together, Mike had read the entire How-To Gay Sex Series, the Gayma Sutra, The Joy of Gay Sex, and several other gay sex manuals he’d found on Amazon. Harvey thought his voracious research was hilarious, but he wasn’t laughing when Mike started to try out his new knowledge. Although they had been too tired for sex the night before, they had fallen asleep naked and entwined and woke up the same way. 

“Morning, baby,” Harvey whispered in Mike’s ear. They both had morning breath and needed a shower, but Harvey didn’t care as he found Mike’s mouth and languidly kissed him for several long minutes. 

“Morning,” Mike said back, the kiss bringing him fully awake. “I wanna try something,” he said, diving under the covers to Harvey’s amusement. So far, due to Mike’s inexperience, they had been sticking to oral and hand jobs. Once Harvey had gotten so worked up that he had started to rub his erection against Mike’s ass crack, but Mike had rolled away, which indicated to Harvey that he wasn’t ready for anal yet. He had high hopes for the future though. 

Under the covers, Harvey felt Mike’s wet mouth on his growing dick. He reached down to pet his hair and caress his face. Mike had been practicing and had gotten so much better at giving head than that first time, taking Harvey in further, and doing delicious things with his tongue. Mike’s mouth was gone for a moment and he heard some sucking noises, and just when he was wondering what Mike was doing, his mouth was back on his cock and a wet finger prodded at his asshole. “Oh Jesus,” Harvey said as the finger pressed in to the second knuckle. 

Mike seemed to take that as permission and worked the finger in farther as he sucked and licked. Harvey pulled the covers back so he could fully see Mike’s face and Mike raised his gaze so Harvey could see his sparkling blue eyes. “So beautiful,” Harvey whispered, as Mike’s finger probed, searching. When Mike found his prostate, Harvey threw his head back, his breath shaky. “Oh God, Mike,” he moaned, writhing as Mike stroked it over and over. “Jesus, fuck me,” he shouted. In his encounters with men, Harvey was the one usually doing the fucking, but he had been fucked twice in his life, once in college by one of his professors, which was awesome at the time, although undoubtably inappropriate, and once by a guy he’d picked up in a bar about ten years ago while he was drunk, and that had been...not so great. But he’d never wanted a cock up his ass as bad as he wanted Mike’s right now. 

Mike’s head popped up, leaving Harvey’s glistening, rock-hard erection waving in the air. “Really? You’d let me do that?” he said, as if Harvey had offered him a million bucks. 

“Lube’s under the bathroom sink,” Harvey answered. Mike ran to the bathroom, and Harvey chuckled as he heard him frantically searching in the cabinet, slowly stroking himself thinking of what was to come. 

Mike quickly emerged and bounced back on the bed with a bottle of Astroglide that Harvey was glad he had the forethought to buy recently. He held it up and smiled. “You’ve been thinking about this,” he teased. 

“Well, I was thinking I’d be using it to put my dick in your ass, but yeah,” Harvey admitted. 

Mike squeezed some out and started to slick himself up. “I’ve been thinking about that too, but you first.” 

Harvey smiled and started to roll over, grabbing some pillows to prop himself up so his dick wouldn’t get smashed. “Have you done this with a woman before?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Mike admitted. “A couple.” 

“Rachel?” Harvey asked, sorry he did as soon as it left his mouth. Way to kill the mood, he internally chastised himself. 

Mike nodded and said, “She’s pretty adventurous in bed, but I don’t want to talk about her.” 

Harvey was in agreement there and turned himself fully face down. 

“Wait,” Mike said, “I’ve been watching some videos, and I saw guys doing it face to face. That’s what I want.” 

Harvey turned on his back and started to use the pillows to prop up his hips instead. “Pushy,” he said to Mike, smiling. He shook his head. “Watching some videos,” he teased. 

“Hey, you won’t be making fun of me in a minute,” Mike said, jumping on top of Harvey and giving him a sloppy, dirty kiss. They made out for a little bit, rubbing their slick cocks against each other before Mike broke the kiss and reached again for the bottle of lube. He squeezed a generous amount onto his fingers and pushed one, then two fingers into Harvey’s tight channel while Harvey writhed and moaned, “Fuck me, fuck me.” 

“Don’t want to hurt you,” Mike said, breathless, his eyes on his disappearing fingers, entranced as if watching magic. 

“You won’t,” Harvey insisted. “Do it.” 

Mike propped Harvey’s hips up higher on the pillows and Harvey pulled his knees up to give Mike easier access. Mike positioned himself on his knees and started to ease his cock into Harvey slowly. “Oh, shit,” he breathed out, “don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to last.” 

Once Mike was all the way in, he stopped as if afraid he would come if he moved even one millimeter. They were both sweaty and breathing hard. “Move, goddammit!” Harvey yelled, canting his hips up to get Mike going. 

Mike pulled out slowly and thrust back in, a look of pure, concentrated lust on his face. He leaned down and crushed his mouth against Harvey’s as he started thrusting, first slowly, evenly, then speeding up and getting more erratic, all the time breathing into Harvey’s mouth, Harvey gripped at his back, his arms, his neck, running his hands on any skin he could reach, licking into Mike’s mouth as Mike did the same back. The friction of Mike’s pelvis against his cock, paired with the fullness in his ass was driving him wild. He could feel Mike’s dick start to pulse inside him as Mike's body jerked and he moaned into his mouth. The feel of Mike coming inside him, paired with the rubbing against his cock sent Harvey over the edge and he came again and again with Mike still inside him. 

Mike collapsed on top of him, licking and sucking at Harvey’s sweaty neck, holding on tight. “That was the best thing ever,” he said with great feeling, his voice muffled against Harvey’s skin. 

“Yeah,” Harvey agreed. It really was. 

Eventually Mike slipped out and rolled off of him with a sated sigh. “We are fucking disgusting,” he said, sniffing at himself with distaste. 

“Shower?” Harvey suggested. 

As they playfully washed each other in the shower, and then got dressed to go out for brunch, Harvey thought about how this was just the beginning of the rest of his life, working, playing, and loving with Mike. Harvey was still the person he had always been. He still liked witty banter and movie quotes, challenges and high stakes, boxing and baseball. But he was no longer alone, hiding from himself or looking for the next external fire to put out in order to ignore the fire within. He didn’t have to wear a mask of bravado to cover his fears anymore. He was finally at home in his own skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s long-winded notes: 
> 
> This is my first Suits fanfic (and probably last) and my first fanfic in many years. I wrote a few X-Files fics back in the day, and both times I started writing when the series was almost over. Clearly I like angst, and I can never find enough Harvey-angst in the Suits fandom, so this angst-o-rama has been brewing for a while.
> 
> I tried to keep as true to canon as I could up until the middle of season 6, episode 12 when Harvey visits his mother, but the timeline on Suits is pretty hard to follow and there are some discrepancies I had to figure out how to deal with. For instance, there are a couple of young kids at Harvey’s dad’s funeral in flashback, who I think we’re meant to assume are Marcus’ kids, but seven years later they would have been teenagers, so who would Harvey have been reading Pinkalicious to? I had to give Marcus additional younger children. 
> 
> This story mostly grew out of me always being bugged about the story arc involving Lily Specter on the show. Obviously on the show she didn’t do anything as horrible to Harvey as she did in my story, but I couldn’t understand why Paula and then Donna insisted that he had to forgive his mother. I mean, it’s one thing to forgive a parent for cheating on the other parent, but it’s a whole other level to forgive a parent who insists that a child lie to the other parent about the cheating and never apologized for that. I would find it perfectly understandable if Harvey felt that relationship wasn’t worth repairing. You can come to terms with something a parent has done without reconciling with them. And then for his mom to say she forgave him for staying away for so long? That seemed completely out of line and he had every right to be angry and call her selfish and self-centered. She did rectify it by telling him later that it was all her fault and she should have protected him, not scarred him, but it was too late for me. She should have said that to him years and years ago. It really annoyed me how in the final season Harvey and his mom are suddenly as close as can be as if nothing ever happened, and then she drops dead of a heart attack. What are the chances of having two parents under 70 who look perfectly healthy drop dead of heart attacks? Such bad writing. 
> 
> Marcus got me angry too in S6E12. It seems like his alliances are based on who is doing something for him. He’s allied with his mom because she and Bobby were in a position to help out with the kids while he was sick, and he blames Harvey’s rift with their mother on Harvey, even though he knows about what their mom did and Harvey’s the one who helped him out when he was sick in the past, and struggling with a gambling problem, and to start his restaurant. He just seems really ungrateful and unfair to Harvey. He should be understanding of why Harvey can’t reconcile with their mother. 
> 
> I love a lot about Suits, but the farfetched aspects drive me a little crazy. The premise of the whole show is absurd (Harvey never could have hired Mike because a firm of that size would have an HR department that would have done a background check and requested college and law school transcripts, recommendation letters, etc.), but I suspended disbelief because I liked the characters (and GM is pretty much the hottest person I’ve ever seen).
> 
> Other things drive me crazy too, like Harvey going out with Paula. Completely unethical therapist behavior even a year after therapy ended. 
> 
> Anyway, that’s my rant and explains why I prefer fanfic over actual shows. The one thing I do appreciate is how the show allowed Harvey to evolve from a self-centered douche in season 1 to someone who can talk about emotions and show love in season 9, so I’m not completely bashing the show. Oh, and the clothes are awesome. 
> 
> Progressive Counting is a real treatment for those recovering from trauma or PTSD. I doubt I’m describing it here very accurately, but the only education I have in it is courtesy of Google. It sounds pretty cool though and apparently has high rates of success. My medical and legal degrees are also from the school of Google, so I apologize to anyone with a medical, psychiatric, or legal background for inaccuracies. 
> 
> I thank anyone who read my epic tale!


End file.
